GIFT    OF 
JANE  K.SATHER 


WHEN  KANSAS  WAS  YOUNG 


THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

KBW  YORK   •    BOSTON   •     CHICAGO   •    DALLAS 
ATLANTA   •    SAN  FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN  &  CO.,  LIMITED 

LONDON   •    BOMBAY   •    CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 

THE  MACMILLAN  CO.  OP  CANADA,  LTD. 

TORONTO 


WHEN 
KANSAS  WAS  YOUNG 


BY 

T.   A.   McNEAL 


gotft 

THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 
1922 

Att  rights  reserved 


PRINTED  IN   THE  UNITED   STATES   OF  AMERICA 


COPYRIGHT,  1922, 
BY  THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY. 

Set  up  and  electrotyped.    Published  September,  1922, 

h 


u 


Press  of 

J.  J.  Little  &  Ives  Company 
New  York,  U.  S.  A. 


*• 

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FOREWORD 

The  stories  contained  in  this  book  have  been  written 
at  odd  times  and  published  in  the  Daily  Capital  of 
Topeka,  Kansas.  They  were  continued  because  the 
readers  of  the  Capital  seemed  to  enjoy  them  and  asked 
for  more.  I  received  a  good  many  requests  that  they 
be  put  into  book  form  and  through  the  kindness  of  The 
Macmillan  Company  this  has  been  done.  The  stories 
present,  I  think,  some  pictures  of  frontier  life  and 
frontier  characters  not  found  in  any  other  book.  I 
hope  the  readers  of  the  book  will  enjoy  reading  the 
stories  as  much  as  I  have  enjoyed  writing  them.  If 
they  do  I  will  be  more  than  satisfied. 


540659 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAQB 

I.    THE  EARLIEST  DAYS: 

The  Largest  Indian  Council .  1 

A  Frontier  Court 4 

When  Slaves  Were  Hunted  in  Kansas 7 

II.     HAPPENINGS  IN  THE  SEVENTIES: 

A  Frontier  Foot  Race 11 

Recollections  of  a  Frontier  Sheriff 16 

The  Looting  of  a  County 20 

The  Old-Time  Deestrict  School 24 

The  Downfall  of  Pomeroy 29 

When  Newton  Was  the  Wickeedst  Town  ....  37 

An  International  Episode 39 

The  Looting  of  Harper  County 45 

The  Legislature  of  1874 49 

The  Fight  at  Adobe  Watts 53 

The  Kansas  Runnymede 57 

The  Comanche    Steal 61 

The  Legislature  of  1875 65 

A    Whisky   Murder 73 

Circumstantial  Evidence 76 

The  First  Paper  in  Barber  County 80 

The    Wonderful  Mirage 83 

The  Last  Indian  Raid  in  Kansas 86 

The  Hilhnan  Case 89 

III.      PlCTUHESQUE   FIGURES: 

A   Frontier  Surveyor 93 

Frontier  Barbers 96 

"Windy  Smith"  and  "Tiger  JacV 99 

Bad  Men — Real  and  Imitations 103 

vii 


viii  CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAQB 

A   Border  Justice 106 

A   Frontier  Attorney 109 

Didn't  Recollect  the  President Ill 

Some  Limbs  of  the  Law 114 

"The  Pilgrim   Bard" 119 

Phrenology  under  Difficulties 124 

The  Pioneer  Preacher 129 

An  Early-Day  Murder  and  Man  Hunt   ....  133 

A  Partisan  Tombstone 136 

The  Gambler  Who  Tempted  Fate 138 

Pete   and  Ben 142 

IV.     EVENTS  IN  THE  EIGHTIES: 

A  Fake  Election 145 

When  an  Indian  Agency  Came  Near  Being  Wiped 

Out 149 

The  Justice  of  the  Border 153 

The  Great  Winter  Kill 159 

The  Organization  of  Wichita  County 163 

A   Tragedy  of  the  Frontier 170 

Draw  Poker  on  the  Border 177 

Cimarron  vs.  Ingalls 180 

A    Steer   Was  the  Ante 186 

When  Hell  Was  in  Session  at  Caldwell  ....  189 

Campaigning  on  the  Frontier 193 

The  Tribulations  of  Early-Day  Editors  ....  197 

V.    STRIKING  PERSONALITIES: 

Jerry  Simpson 200 

Dynamite   Dave 205 

Two  Frontier  Doctors 210 

Carrie  Nation 214 

The  Discomfited  Hypnotist 218 

The  Story  of  a  Bank  Wrecker 221 

Dennis  T.  Flynn 227 

A  Populist  Judge 231 

The  Stinger  Stung 235 

Boston  Corbett 242 


CONTENTS 


A  Perfect  Defense  ...........  246 

Captain  Painter,  Detective     ...     ;.     ....  249 

VI.     KANSAS  GROWING  UP: 

The  Coming  Back  of  Denver  Boggs  .....  254 

When  Bill  Backslid     .........     r.  258 

The  Rise  and  Fall  of  Grant  Gillette   .....  261 

Convicted  under  His  Own  Lcuw  .......  265 

The  Last  Redd  of  the  Daltons  .......  270 

Chester  I.  Long       .......     r.     ...  276 

Governor  Allen's  Maiden  Speech     ......  281 


WHEN  KANSAS  WAS  YOUNG 


WHEN  KANSAS  WAS  YOUNG 

THE    EARLIER    DAYS 

The  Largest  Indian  Council 

MEDICINE  LODGE,  which  has  earned  a  place  in 
Kansas  history,  is  located  at  the  confluence  of 
the  Medicine  River  and  Elm  Creek  in  the 
county  of  Barber. 

Few,  if  any,  towns  in  the  state  have  more  sightly 
locations,  and  in  the  early  days  its  natural  beauty  was 
accentuated  by  the  fact  that  in  order  to  reach  it  one 
had  to  travel  across  many  miles  of  treeless  prairie.  My 
first  sight  of  it  was  after  a  three  days*  tiresome  ride 
in  a  freight  wagon  when,  coming  to  the  crest  of  a  rise 
some  three  miles  to  the  northeast,  I  saw  the  frontier 
village,  at  that  distance,  apparently  almost  surrounded 
by  thick  groves  of  cottonwood  and  elm  trees,  while  here 
and  there  through  rifts  in  the  wooded  fringe  could  be 
seen  the  swift  flowing  waters  of  the  converging  streams 
gleaming  in  the  sunlight  like  ribbons  of  silver  flecked 
with  gold. 

The  Medicine  River  derived  its  name  from  its  sup- 
posed healing  qualities  and  the  thick  grove  at  the 
junction  of  the  two  streams  furnished  a  favorite  camp- 
ing place  for  the  Indians  who  met  there  on  stated  oc- 
casions, and  under  the  guidance  of  their  medicine  men, 

1 


2  WHEN  KANSAS  WAS  YOUNG 

performed  their  savage  rites  and  cleansed  their  systems 
with  copious  draughts  of  the  sacred  waters. 

Medicine  Lodge,  long  before  the  advent  of  the  white 
man,  was  the  center  of  the  favorite  hunting  ground  of 
the  red  men.  No  other  part  of  Kansas  is  so  plentifully 
supplied  with  swift  running  streams,  with  sweeter 
native  grasses,  or  such  perfect  natural  shelter  as  Bar- 
ber County.  The  Medicine  River,  flowing  from  the 
northwest  corner  to  the  southeast,  furnishes  fully  fifty 
miles  of  living  water,  just  sufficiently  saline  to  make  it 
as  desirable  stock  water  as  there  is  in  the  world.  In 
addition,  there  are  the  swift  flowing  streams,  most  of 
them  tributary  to  the  Medicine,  Turkey  Creek,  Elm 
Creek,  Spring  Creek  and  Antelope,  Cottonwood,  Big 
Mule  and  Little  Mule,  Bear  Creek,  Elk  Creek,  Hack- 
berry  and  Bitter  Creek,  with  several  others  whose  names 
just  now  escape  my  memory. 

The  names  of  these  streams  indicate  the  variety  of 
game  that  lured  the  Indian  hunter  and  furnished  meat 
for  his  wikiup.  It  is  no  wonder  that  he  was  loth  to 
give  up  the  hunting  ground  which  had  been  the  favorite 
of  his  ancestors,  as  well  as  his-  own. 

When  after  a  long  period  of  savage  warfare  the 
Government  induced  the  head  men  of  the  leading  prairie 
tribes  to  meet  in  a  peace  council  and  arrange  terms  of 
permanent  peace  between  the  white  men  and  the  red, 
by  sort  of  common  consent  the  location  where  Medicine 
Lodge  now  stands  was  chosen  for  the  place  of  meeting. 
That  was  not  only  the  greatest  gathering  of  Indians 
and  white  men  in  the  history  of  the  United  States  in 
point  of  numbers,  but  the  permanent  results  were  the 
most  important.  Never  since  then,  1868,  has  there 
been  a  war  between  the  great  tribes  represented  at  that 
peace  council  and  the  white  men.  The  Indians  who 
gave  their  word  there  kept  the  faith  and  buried  the  war 
tomahawk,  never  to  dig  it  up  again.  It  would  be  well 


THE  EARLIER  DAYS  3 

indeed  for  the  world  if  so-called  Christian  white  men 
had  as  high  a  sense  of  honor  as  these  untutored  savages. 

Of  course  no  accurate  count  was  taken  of  the  number 
of  tribesmen  who  attended  that  conference,  but  con- 
servative judges  who  were  present  estimated  the  number 
at  not  less  than  15,000. 

In  command  of  the  United  States  forces,  who 
guarded  the  commissioners,  was  General  Sherman,  and 
with  him  were  some  of  the  most  experienced  Indian 
fighters  in  the  old  army.  Governor  Crawford  left  his 
comfortable  seat  at  the  new  state  capital  to  attend  the 
conference,  and  it  was  to  his  keen  observation  and 
knowledge  of  Indian  character  that  the  peace  commis- 
sioners and  the  small  body  of  United  States  troops 
were  probably  indebted  for  their  lives.  There  were 
restless  spirits  among  the  Indians  who  had  little  faith 
in  the  word  of  the  white  men.  This  was  not  remarkable, 
for  the  history  of  the  dealings  of  the  white  men  with  the 
Indians  had  been  marred  by  bad  faith  and  outrageous 
swindles  perpetrated  upon  the  red  men.  The  restless 
spirits  among  the  tribesmen  persuaded  their  fellow 
savages  that  this  was  simply  another  scheme  of  the 
pale  faces  to  take  away  from  them  their  favorite  hunt- 
ing grounds,  to  force  them  on  to  cramped  reservations 
and  there  to  let  them  die.  They  said  that  by  a  sur- 
prise attack  they  could  overcome  the  white  men  and 
the  pale-faced  soldiers  and  massacre  the  entire  outfit. 

It  was  a  rather  dark  afternoon,  with  a  drizzling 
rain.  Conditions  were  favorable  for  a  surprise  attack. 
Crawford  saw  certain  signs  among  the  Indians  which 
aroused  his  suspicions,  which  he  communicated  to  Gen- 
eral Sherman,  who  at  once  drew  up  his  troops  in  hollow 
square  with  a  number  of  cannon  pointed  toward  the 
savages,  who  were  camped  on  the  hills  overlooking  the 
river  and  grove. 

He  also  sent  word  that  the  chiefs  who  were  suspected 


4  WHEN  KANSAS  WAS  YOUNG 

of  causing  the  trouble  must  come  into  the  white  camp 
to  be  held  as  hostages.  That  ended  all  plans  for  a 
massacre.  The  council  lasted  several  days.  A  general 
agreement  was  reached  and  the  treaty  was  duly  signed 
by  the  United  States  commissioners  and  the  leading 
chiefs  of  the  great  Indian  tribes,  the  Arapahoes,  Co- 
manches  and  Kiowas.  The  beautiful  hunting  grounds, 
the  clear,  swift  flowing  streams,  the  sheltering  groves, 
all  passed  from  the  possession  of  the  red  men  to  the 
white,  and  within  four  years  afterward  the  little  town 
of  Medicine  Lodge  had  its  beginning. 

A  Frontier  Court 

When  the  ninth  judicial  district  of  Kansas  was 
formed  it  covered  a  territory  larger  than  any  one  of 
more  than  half  the  states  in  the  American  Union.  Ex- 
tending from  Chase  County  southward  to  the  Indian 
Territory  and  westward  to  the  Colorado  line,  it  was 
quite  possible  to  travel  in  a  straight  line  for  300  miles, 
all  the  distance  being  within  the  boundaries  of  this 
judicial  district. 

The  first  judge  of  the  district  was  the  celebrated 
Col.  Sam  Wood,  of  Chase  County,  who  was  succeeded 
by  William  R.  Brown,  also  of  Chase  County.  Sam 
Wood  looked  the  part  of  a  frontier  judge,  but  Brown 
was  a  typical  New  Englander  in  appearance  and 
speech.  Shortsightedness  compelled  him  to  wear 
glasses,  and  added  to  the  dignity  and  solemnity  of  his 
appearance.  A  full  reddish  beard  reached  half  way 
to  his  waist,  and  tossed  about  in  the  loyal  winds  which 
loved  it  well. 

It  fell  to  Judge  Brown  to  hold  the  first  term  of 
court  in  the  newly  organized  county  of  Barber.  Court 
house  there  was  none,  although  the  thieves  who  or- 
ganized the  county  had  incurred  sufficient  debt,  osten- 


THE  EARLIER  DAYS  5 

sibly  fer  that  purpose,  to  have  built  a  fine  temple  of 
justice.  The  opening  term  was  held,  I  think,  in  a 
schoolhouse  which  had  just  been  completed.  The 
sheriff  was  a  unique  character  by  the  name  of  Reuben 
Lake.  With  great  dignity  and  solemnity  the  new  judge 
directed  the  sheriff  to  open  court.  Reuben  had  some- 
where learned  the  usual  formula  for  opening  court, 
and  varied  it  with  some  observations  of  his  own.  In 
stentorian  voice  he  announced  to  the  assembled  crowd: 

"Hear  ye,  hear  ye;  the  honorable  district  court  for 
Barber  County  is  now  in  session.  All  you  blanks  blank 
sons  of  blank  who  have  business  in  this  court  will  lay 
off  your  guns  and  come  to  the  front,  and  all  you  blank, 
blank  sons  of  blank  who  have  no  business  in  this  court 
will  lay  off  your  guns  and  keep quiet.'* 

Just  what  the  solemn  and  dignified  judge  thought  of 
the  manner  in  which  the  court  was  opened  is  not  stated. 
The  dean  of  the  early  Barber  County  bar  was  Captain 
Byron  P.  Ayers.  Captain  Ayers  was  born  in  Ohio, 
educated  for  a  teacher,  but  studied  law  and  wandered 
westward  until  he  reached  the  territory  of  Kansas.  He 
took  some  interest  in  territorial  politics  and  was  elected 
chief  clerk  of  the  territorial  council  back  in  the  fifties. 
When  the  war  came  he  was  made  captain  of  one  of  the 
Kansas  companies,  fought  with  Lyon  at  Wilson's 
Creek,  with  Blunt  at  Prairie  Grove,  and  in  the  other 
battles  of  the  West.  With  a  wide  acquaintance  among 
the  leading  men  of  the  new  state  and  a  creditable  rec- 
ord as  a  soldier,  his  prospects  were  bright,  but  John 
Barleycorn  got  a  strangle  hold  on  him  and  made  his 
life  a  failure.  He  seemed  to  me  to  be  a  man  who  had 
been  more  than  ordinarily  gifted  by  nature  and  with 
really  great  possibilities,  but  who  had  entirely  given 
up  the  fight.  When  knocked  down  in  the  first  round 
he  lacked  the  energy,  determination,  and  courage  to 
get  up  and  fight  again.  To  the  hour  of  his  death,  how- 


6  WHEN  KANSAS  WAS  YOUNG 

ever,  he  retained  a  certain  marked  dignity  of  bearing 
and  distinction  of  presence  which  would  have  caused 
him  to  attract  attention  in  any  assembly.  His  con- 
versation was  remarkably  free  from  inaccuracies  of 
expression,  his  literary  taste  was  excellent,  and  even 
when  fairly  well  "tanked  up"  he  was  never  guilty  of 
vulgarity  or  maudlin  silliness.  He  was,  in  fact,  rather 
more  dignified  and  precise  when  full  than  when  sober. 

His  regular  habitation  was  in  the  little  hamlet  called 
Sun  City,  but  having  been  elected  county  attorney,  an 
office  which  paid,  as  I  recall,  $500  a  year  in  "scrip," 
worth  at  that  time  from  fifteen  to  twenty  cents  on  the 
dollar,  he  was  a  frequent  visitor  at  the  Lodge,  and 
when  there  slept  in  the  hayloft  of  the  livery  stable.  It 
must  not  be  supposed,  however,  that  this  was  any  dis- 
grace. In  fact,  nearly  everybody  who  did  not  happen 
to  have  homes  of  their  own  slept  in  the  livery  stable. 

One  morning,  following  an  evening  and  night  of 
unusual  potations,  Cap  awoke  with  that  feeling  that 
comes  "the  morning  after."  His  eyes  were  bloodshot, 
and  millet  straw  and  millet  seed  were  plentifully  mingled 
with  his  hair  and  long  auburn  beard.  Altogether  he 
was  a  picture  of  disconsolateness  and  disgust.  He  sat 
up  and  turning  to  a  fellow  lodger  he  said  in  a  mourn- 
ful, almost  sepulchral  voice:  "Ten  thousand  years 
hence,  when  we  both  are  dead  and  damned,  our  ghosts 
will  sit  on  the  dark  Plutonian  shore  and  read  the  record 
of  our  misspent  lives  by  the  red  glare  of  hell." 

Speaking  of  Captain  Ayers  brings  to  mind  another 
remarkable  character,  who  came  to  the  Lodge  later. 
He  always  signed  his  name  Dr.  G.  W.  Ayers.  He  was  a 
horse  doctor,  possessed  of  a  most  remarkable  vocabu- 
lary, and  a  facility  for  original  and  striking  expres- 
sions such  as  I  have  never  seen  equaled.  I  think  that 
Doc  and  truth  had  never  met,  or  at  least  had  never 
formed  a  speaking  acquaintance.  There  were  times 


THE  EARLIER  DAYS  7 

when  I  considered  him  one  of  the  most  spontaneous 
and  delightful  old  liars  I  ever  met.  Back  in  1874, 
several  years  before  I  reached  Barber  County,  there 
was  a  saloon  row  in  the  frontier  drink  emporium,  in 
the  course  of  which  Captain  Byron  P.  Ayers  was 
slightly  wounded. 

Doc  Ayers  came  to  the  Lodge  during  the  early 
eighties,  but  one  day,  forgetting  that  I  knew  when  he 
arrived,  he  entertained  me  with  an  account  of  the  old 
saloon  row. 

"I  was  the  only  doctor  in  the  town,"  he  said.  "They 
sent  for  me.  I  found  when  I  got  there  that  a  bullet 
had  plowed  across  Cap  Ayers'  midriff  and  let  his 
bowels  out.  It  occurred  to  me,  when  I  looked  him  over, 
that  he  had  more  bowels  than  he  needed  and  so  I  cut 
off  a  couple  of  feet  of  intestines,  put  the  rest  back  and 
sewed  him  up." 

This  most  marvelous  surgical  operation  performed 
by  a  horse  doctor,  he  assured  me,  caused  Captain 
Ayers  little  inconvenience. 

For  many  years  the  body  of  Capt.  Byron  P.  Ayers 
has  lain  in  what  I  presume  is  an  unmarked  and  uncared 
for  grave.  As  I  think  of  his  wasted  talent  I  am  re- 
minded of  Whittier's 

"Of  all  sad  words  of  tongue  or  pen 
The  saddest  are  these :  'It  might  have  been !'  " 


When  Slaves  Were  Hunted  m  Kansas 

The  first  volume  of  Kansas  reports  of  the  supreme 
court  also  contains  the  reports  of  the  territorial  court 
of  the  last  year  of  Kansas  territory.  In  this  as  in 
all  the  Kansas  reports  there  are  a  good  many  human 
interest  stories,  among  them  one  relating  to  the  last 


8  WHEN  KANSAS  WAS  YOUNG 

days  of  slavery  when  Kansas  was  the  battle  ground 
and  the  nation  was  rapidly  drifting  into  the  maelstrom 
of  war. 

On  January  2,  1859,  a  slave  named  Peter  Fisher 
escaped  from  Kentucky  and  for  some  reason,  instead 
of  taking  the  short  cut  to  Canada  and  freedom  seems 
to  have  headed  westward  and  landed  in  Kansas  ter- 
ritory. Here  he  fell  in  with  a  friend,  one  Lewis  L. 
Weld,  of  Leavenworth  County,  who  took  him  into  his 
employment. 

The  owners  of  Fisher  were  two  minors,  John  O. 
Hutchison  and  Anna  Belle  Hutchison,  whose  alleged 
guardian,  somehow  getting  track  of  Peter,  followed 
him  into  the  territory. 

If  he  supposed,  however,  that  it  would  be  very  easy 
to  get  the  fugitive  and  carry  him  back  to  bondage 
from  a  United  States  territory,  he  was  disillusioned. 
Judging  from  the  indictment  found  by  the  territorial 
grand  jury  things  were  lively  when  he  found  his  negro. 
The  indictment  reads  as  follows:  "Lewis  Weld  with 
force  of  arms  to  wit :  with  a  club,  knife,  pistol  and 
other  hurtful  weapons  did  aid  the  said  Peter  to  escape," 
etc. 

It  is  entirely  probable  also  that  Peter  himself  took 
a  hand  with  some  of  the  "other  hurtful  weapons," 
quite  probably  with  a  hoe,  fork,  corn  cutter,  and  such 
other  farm  implements  as  were  "convenient  and  ef- 
fective." 

Lewis  Weld  was  promptly  arrested  under  the  Fugi- 
tive Slave  Act  and  as  promptly  indicted  by  the  grand 
jury,  made  up  no  doubt  of  Southern  sympathizers 
from  the  bordering  state  of  Missouri.  Weld's  attor- 
neys filed  a  motion  to  quash  the  indictment  and  the 
motion  came  on  to  be  heard  before  Chief  Justice  Pettit 
of  the  territorial  court.  Weld's  attorneys  urged  eleven 
objections  to  the  indictment,  the  first  being  that  the 


THE  EARLIER  DAYS  9 

party  who  made  the  arrest  had  no  authority  to  do  so 
under  the  provisions  of  the  Fugitive  Slave  Law.  Judge 
Pettit  sustained  this  objection  as  well  as  five  others, 
though  one  wonders,  if  the  first  objection  was  well 
taken,  why  the  need  of  any  others.  The  language  of 
the  opinion  indicates  the  difficulties  under  which  the 
courts  of  that  early  period  labored.  Judge  Pettit 
says:  This  opinion  has  been  hastily  written  in  the 
midst  of  turmoil  and  confusion;  in  the  absence  of  a 
library  to  consult  and  without  time  to  correct  or  pay 
much  attention  to  legal  diction;  but  I  am  confident 
that  in  its  main  features  it  will  stand  the  test  of  the 
most  searching  and  rigid  legal  and  judicial  criticism.'* 
So  far  as  I  know,  the  judge's  confidence  in  the  sound- 
ness of  his  opinion  was  never  shaken  by  the  adverse 
decision  of  a  higher  court  and  Weld  does  not  seem  to 
have  been  again  arrested.  What  became  of  the  fugi- 
tive, Fisher,  I  do  not  know,  but  it  is  safe  to  assume 
that  he  never  again  was  reduced  to  slavery. 

Pettit  was  a  man  of  ability  and  considerable  dis- 
tinction. He  was  born  at  Sa'cket  Harbor,  June  24, 
1807,  was  admitted  to  the  bar  in  1831  and  engaged  in 
the  practice  of  the  law  at  Lafayette,  in  the  then  new 
state  of  Indiana.  He  served  three  terms  in  Congress 
and  a  short  time  as  senator  from  the  state  of  Indiana 
and  was  appointed  chief  justice  of  the  territory  of 
Kansas  in  1859,  by  President  Buchanan,  serving  in 
that  capacity  until  Kansas  was  admitted  to  the  Union. 
While  in  the  course  of  the  opinion  above  referred  to, 
he  very  frankly  expresses  his  sympathy  for  the  insti- 
tution of  slavery  and  especially  his  commendation  of 
the  Fugitive  Slave  Law,  his  pride  in  his  opinion  as  a 
lawyer  was  stronger  than  his  prejudice  against  the 
man  who  would  aid  an  escaping  slave.  After  the  ter- 
ritorial court  gave  place  to  the  state  courts,  Judge 
Pettit  moved  back  to  Indiana,  still  firm  in  the  Demo- 


10  WHEN  KANSAS  WAS  YOUNG 

cratic  faith  and  probably  at  heart  a  sympathizer  with 
the  South,  as  he  was  selected  as  a  delegate  to  the 
Democratic  convention  of  1864,  which  made  the  famous 
platform  declaration  that  the  war  was  a  failure,  and 
demanding  a  compromise  with  the  Confederacy,  a  dec- 
laration by  the  way  which  kept  the  Democratic  party 
out  of  power  nationally  for  more  than  a  quarter  of  a 
century. 

In  1870  Judge  Pettit  was  elected  to  the  supreme 
court  in  Indiana  where  he  served  until  1876.  He  died 
at  Lafayette,  June  17,  1877,  within  one  week  of  his 
seventieth  birthday. 


HAPPENINGS  IN  THE  SEVENTIES 

A  Frontier  Foot  Race 

BARBER  COUNTY  was  unique  in  that  it  was 
fairly  well  timbered,  while  east  and  north  of  it 
was  a  treeless  prairie.  For  several  years  after 
the  first  settlement,  a  considerable  part  of  the  male  in- 
habitants of  the  county  made  a  living  for  themselves 
and  families  by  hauling  cedar  posts  to  Wichita  and 
Hutchinson.  The  posts  were  gathered  out  of  the  can- 
yons of  Barber  and  Comanche  Counties.  In  addition  to 
the  cedar,  there  were  found  along  the  numerous  streams 
very  considerable  groves  of  cottonwood,  elm,  hack- 
berry,  and  walnut.  As  most  of  the  timber  grew  on 
government  land,  that  is  on  land  the  government  held  in 
trust  for  the  Osage  Indians,  no  one  had  a  legal  right  to 
cut  and  haul  away  any  of  it,  but  in  these  days  by  com- 
mon consent  certain  laws  were  respected  and  others 
were  not.  While  the  settlers  in  Barber  considered  it 
entirely  legitimate  to  cut  and  haul  timber  from  the 
government  land  either  to  sell  it  or  use  it  for  fuel,  they 
drew  the  line  to  a  considerable  extent  on  outsiders. 

It  was  not  uncommon  for  some  Barberite,  who  had 
secured  an  appointment  as  deputy  United  States  mar- 
shal, to  arrest  some  impecunious  woodhauler  from 
Harper,  Pratt,  or  Kingman  County,  make  him  give  up 
his  load  and  in  some  cases  what  money  he  might  hap- 
pen to  have  on  his  person,  under  threat  that  if  he 
refused  to  come  across  he  would  be  dragged  before  a 
United  States  court  and  jailed  and  fined.  It  is  only 

11 


12  WHEN  KANSAS  WAS  YOUNG 

fair  to  say  that  not  many  men  would  engage  in  this 
sort  of  a  blackmailing  scheme,  but  a  few  unprincipled 
scoundrels  did  make  some  revenue  in  that  way.  One 
day  a  party  of  Harper  men  drove  over  into  Barber 
and  loaded  their  wagons  with  firewood  cut  from  gov- 
ernment land.  Among  them  was  a  boy  of  perhaps 
fifteen  by  the  name  of  Kittleman.  The  woodhaulers 
made  the  mistake  of  driving  through  the  town  of  Medi- 
cine Lodge  with  their  loads.  The  sheriff  and  his 
deputy,  who  were  not  very  busy  that  day,  arrested  the 
Harper  men,  compelled  them  to  unload,  and,  with  some 
admonitions  about  the  seriousness  of  cutting  and  re- 
moving timber  from  public  lands,  permitted  them  to 
proceed  homeward  with  empty  wagons,  sadder  and 
also  decidedly  madder  men  than  they  were  before. 
Their  despoilers  regarded  it  a  good  joke  on  the  Harper 
men,  and  also  an  easy  way  of  securing  firewood,  for 
they  immediately  appropriated  the  loads  which  had 
been  gathered  with  much  labor  and  perspiration  by 
the  men  from  Harper. 

Young  Kittleman  treasured  the  memory  of  that 
transaction  and  determined  that  some  time  he  would 
get  even  with  Medicine  Lodge.  He  was  a  wonderfully 
active  boy  and  as  he  grew  developed  a  passion  for  ath- 
letic sports,  especially  foot  racing.  When  he  was 
perhaps  seventeen  or  eighteen  his  attention  was  called 
to  a  prize  that  was  offered  by  the  county  fair  associa- 
tion of  Sumner  County,  for  the  man  or  boy  who  could 
run  100  yards  in  the  shortest  time,  and  young  Kittle- 
man determined  to  try  for  the  prize.  The  purse  was 
large  enough  to  attract  a  professional  foot  racer  who 
beat  the  Harper  lad,  but  he  made  such  a  phenomenal 
showing  for  an  untrained  racer  that  he  attracted  the 
attention  of  a  professional  foot  racer  and  trainer,  who 
proposed  to  undertake  his  training  with  the  idea  of 
becoming  his  manager  afterward.  Under  the  careful 


HAPPENINGS  IN  THE  SEVENTIES        13 

instruction  of  this  trainer,  Kittleman  within  a  couple 
of  years  developed  into  the  swiftest  short  distance  run- 
ner in  the  United  States  and  probably  in  the  world. 
As  his  fame  spread,  however,  there  still  lingered  in  his 
mind  the  humiliation  of  having  been  wronged  on  that 
wood  deal  years  before.  While  he  was  running  races 
from  the  Atlantic  to  the  Pacific,  he  was  figuring  be- 
times on  a  plan  to  get  even. 

In  the  railroadless  frontier  town  there  was  not  much 
to  do  and  time  often  hung  heavy  on  the  hands  of  the 
resident  sports.  They  necessarily  had  to  depend  on 
their  own  resources  for  amusement.  Pony  races  were 
a  favorite  form  of  diversion,  but  local  foot  races  were 
a  close  second.  Young  men  and  some  who  were  not 
so  young,  who  thought  they  could  run,  would  go  out 
on  the  prairie,  take  off  boots  and  socks,  and  run  bare- 
foot. Small  wagers  of  from  $1  to  $5  were  made  to 
increase  the  interest.  One  day  a  lean  sinewy  young 
man  came  in  on  the  overland  stage  and  announced  that 
he  was  looking  for  a  location  for  a  sheep  ranch.  A 
local  foot  race  was  on  and  to  pass  away  the  time  the 
prospective  sheep  rancher  strolled  out  with  the  crowd. 
He  seemed  quite  a  good  deal  interested;  said  that  he 
had  always  taken  great  interest  in  athletics  and  espe- 
cially foot  racing;  in  fact  had  at  one  time  been  a 
professional  foot  racer  himself  and  still  kept  his  racing 
shoes  and  tights  as  mementoes  of  his  former  triumphs. 
The  local  racers  immediately  began  to  coax  him  to 
give  an  exhibition  of  his  ability;  most  of  them  had 
never  seen  a  professional  foot  racer  in  action.  The 
young  man,  who  said  his  name  was  Calder,  at  first  was 
reluctant;  said  that  he  had  given  up  all  that  sort  of 
thing  when  he  made  up  his  mind  to  settle  down  on  a 
ranch,  but  finally  agreed,  just  to  be  a  good  fellow,  that 
he  would  give  an  exhibition  of  his  prowess.  His  run- 
ning was  a  revelation  to  the  Medicine  Lodgers.  He 


14  WHEN  KANSAS  WAS  YOUNG 

could  run  so  much  faster  than  the  swiftest  of  them, 
that  they  almost  seemed  to  be  standing  still.  Then, 
too,  when  dressed  in  his  scanty  racing  costume  he 
seemed  to  them  like  a  perfect  specimen  of  a  runner. 
One  of  his  stunts  was  to  beat  a  horse  running  100 
yards.  He  would  run  fifty  yards,  turn  at  a  post  set 
in  the  ground,  and  then  back  to  the  starting  point. 
Where  he  had  the  advantage  of  the  horse  was  in  the 
quicker  start  and  the  ability  to  turn  at  the  post  before 
the  horse  could  either  stop  or  turn. 

The  admiration  and  confidence  in  Calder  grew  apace 
among  the  Medicine  Lodgers.  They  were  satisfied 
that  he  was  a  world  beater;  in  fact  he  assured  them 
that  he  was  probably  the  swiftest  man  on  foot  in  the 
world.  True,  he  didn't  seem  to  be  making  any  par- 
ticular effort  to  find  a  sheep  ranch,  but  they  did  not 
think  of  that  until  afterward.  Finally  a  local  sport 
asked  Calder  if  he  knew  M.  K.  Kittleman.  He  said 
that  he  had  never  heard  of  him.  He  was  told  that 
Kittleman  claimed  to  be  a  great  runner  and  had  made 
the  Harper  people  believe  that  he  was  about  the  fastest 
man  who  ever  came  down  the  pike.  Calder  smiled 
knowingly;  said  that  he  had  seen  local  runners  who 
got  that  fool  idea  in  their  heads  until  they  ran  up 
against  some  person  like  himself  who  could  really  run, 
and  then  they  discovered  that  they  couldn't  deliver  the 
goods.  There  was  some  old  time  rivalry  between  Medi- 
cine Lodge  and  Harper  and  here  was  chance  to  take 
the  railroad  town  down  a  few  notches.  Word  was 
sent  to  the  Harper  people  that  if  they  thought  their 
man  Kittleman  was  a  runner,  to  bring  him  over  to  the 
Lodge  where  there  was  a  man  who  would  trim  him. 
Kittleman  was  willing,  suspiciously,  joyously  willing, 
as  was  recalled  afterward.  A  purse  was  made  up  by 
Medicine  Lodgers  of  $100  with  the  privilege  of  bet- 
ting all  they  cared  to  on  the  side. 

The  race  was  to  start  with  the  shot  of  a  revolver, 


HAPPENINGS  IN  THE  SEVENTIES        15 

the  distance  100  yards.  When  Kittleman  stripped 
for  the  contest  there  was  a  look  of  surprise  on  the 
faces  of  a  good  many  Medicine  Lodge  sports.  At 
that  time  Kittleman  was  the  finest  specimen  of  physical 
manhood  I  have  ever  seen.  He  stood  nearly  six  feet 
and  was  magnificently  proportioned.  Without  an 
ounce  of  surplus  flesh  and  apparently  no  over  develop- 
ment, his  muscles  rippled  under  his  skin,  which  was 
white  as  marble  and  soft  as  satin.  For  the  first  time 
the  backers  of  Calder  discovered  that  in  point  of 
physical  development  their  supposed  champion  was  no 
match  for  the  Harper  lad.  But  they  had  seen  him 
run  and  had  confidence.  Besides,  had  he  not  assured 
them  that  he  was  the  fastest  runner  in  the  United 
States  and  that  he  would  make  that  man  Kittleman 
look  like  a  tortoise?  So  they  cheerfully  bet  their  sub- 
stance, which  Kittleman  and  his  backers  eagerly 
covered  and  hungered  for  more.  At  the  crack  of  the 
pistol  Kittleman  seemed  to  shoot  through  the  air  like 
an  arrow  from  a  bow.  At  the  first  bound  he  covered 
at  least  twenty-five  feet  and  the  Medicine  Lodge  sports 
knew  that  their  money  was  gone.  Calder  was  beaten 
about  ten  yards  and  at  that  Kittleman  seemed  to  make 
little  effort. 

When  the  stake  money  was  handed  over  to  the  victor 
Calder  burst  into  tears;  said  that  he  had  bet  every 
dollar  he  had  in  the  world  on  himself  and  that  now  he 
was  dead  broke  among  comparative  strangers.  His 
plea  touched  the  hearts  of  the  cowboys  who  immedi- 
ately took  up  a  collection  for  his  benefit  and,  though 
they  had  been  losers  themselves,  turned  over  to  him 
$25  or  $30,  sufficient  to  pay  his  way  back  to  his  friends. 
The  next  day  the  Medicine  Lodgers  learned  that  Kit- 
tleman and  Calder  were  having  a  very  pleasant  time 
together  in  Harper,  as  they  divided  their  winnings, 
according  to  previous  arrangement. 

"I  think  may  be,"  remarked  Kittleman  afterward, 


16  WHEN  KANSAS  WAS  YOUNG 

"that  I  am  even  with  those Medicine  Lodge 

fellows  for  that  load  of  wood." 


Recollections  of  a  Frontier  Sheriff 

No  one  would  suppose  from  looking  at  the  rugged 
form  and  face  of  the  present  mayor  of  the  city  of 
Wellington,  that  he  has  lived  long  enough  to  have  been 
a  peace  officer  and  terror  to  evil  doers  along  the  border 
almost  half  a  century  ago,  but  the  fact  is  that  away 
back  in  the  seventies  Joe  Thralls  had  already  estab- 
lished a  reputation  as  a  hunter  of  criminals  that  was 
known  all  along  the  border.  Cool,  tireless,  fearless, 
and  yet  never  reckless,  he  had  a  record  of  generally 
getting  the  men  he  went  after,  no  matter  how  desperate 
they  were,  or  how  great  the  difficulties  in  the  way  of 
the  man-hunter.  In  the  storehouse  of  his  memory  there 
are  many  interesting  stories  and  some  of  them  he  has 
been  induced  to  tell. 

"I  guess,"  said  the  ex-sheriff,  in  a  reminiscent  way,  "that 
the  year  1874  was  about  the  worst  year  that  Sumner  County 
ever  experienced.  First,  there  was  the  drouth  that  cooked 
almost  everything,  and  then  came  the  grasshoppers  and 
cleaned  up  what  little  was  left.  On  top  of  all  this  trouble, 
came  the  news  that  the  Indians  were  about  to  go  on  the 
warpath.  There  were  some  killings,  too.  Pat  Hennesy 
and  some  other  white  men  were  killed  that  summer  down 
on  the  old  Chisholm  trail,  where  the  town  of  Hennesy  is 
located,  and  John  D.  Miles,  the  agent  at  Darlington,  had 
warned  the  settlers  that  an  outbreak  was  threatened  and 
that  the  settlers  along  the  Kansas  border  had  better  pre- 
pare for  the  worst. 

"At  two  o'clock  in  the  morning  of  July  6,  a  little  sawed- 
off  freighter  by  the  name  of  Fletcher  rode  into  Wellington 
yelling  'Indians'  at  every  jump  of  his  horse  and  appealing 
for  men  and  arms  to  defend  Caldwell  against  the  antici- 


HAPPENINGS  IN  THE  SEVENTIES       17 

pated  attack.  In  answer  to  this  appeal,  twenty-one  citizens 
of  Wellington  armed  themselves,  saddled  their  horses,  and 
set  out  for  Caldwell.  The  Indian  scare  had  driven  most 
of  the  horse  thieves  operating  down  in  the  Territory  into 
Caldwell.  They  were  worse  than  the  Indians  and  when 
we  found  a  bunch  of  them  eating  breakfast  at  Caldwell 
it  made  us  want  to  turn  the  Indian  hunt  into  a  horse-thief 
capturing  expedition.  So  bold  had  these  thieves  become 
that  one  of  them  told  one  of  Vail  and  Williamson's  men 
who  were  waiting  to  start  their  stage  line  in  the  territory, 
that  the  stage  company's  mules,  which  had  been  stolen  a 
few  weeks  before,  were  now  on  Polecat  Creek,  south  of 
Caldwell,  and  asked  him  what  the  stage  company  was 
going  to  do  about  it.  Soon  after  breakfast  scouts  came 
in  from  the  south  and  reported  that  there  were  no  Indians 
within  several  miles  of  the  border.  J.  C.  Hopkins  and  his 
brother  were  at  that  time  running  the  Pond  Creek  ranch, 
twenty-five  miles  south  of  Caldwell,  where  they  had  a  store 
and  about  600  head  of  cattle. 

"They  had  been  in  Caldwell  several  days  on  account  of 
the  Indian  scare  and  after  hearing  this  report  from  the 
scouts  they  decided  to  go  back  to  the  ranch.  They  started 
out  alone  and  within  an  hour  eight  well  known  toughs  and 
thieves  were  following  them.  We  believed  that  it  was  the 
intention  of  these  thieves  to  kill  the  Hopkins  brothers,  run 
off  their  stock,  loot  the  store,  and  then  charge  the  crime 
up  to  the  Indians.  A  party  of  us  decided  to  follow  them. 
The  party  was  made  up  of  Bill  Hackney,  Jim  Stipp,  John 
Kirk,  A.  W.  Shearman,  C.  S.  Broadbent,  Capt.  L.  K. 
Myers,  W.  E.  and  J.  M.  Thralls. 

"After  a  brisk  ride  we  caught  up  with  the  thieves,  who 
were  riding  a  short  distance  behind  the  two  Hopkins 
brothers.  When  we  rode  up  they  stopped  and  were  ap- 
parently holding  a  conference,  but  they  followed  on  after 
our  party.  We  had  caught  up  with  the  Hopkins  brothers, 
who  were  mighty  glad  to  see  us,  for  they  had  also  guessed 
that  the  purpose  of  the  thieves  was  to  murder  them. 

"On  arriving  at  Polecat  ranch,  we  stopped  to  let  our 
horses  feed  on  the  grass  for  an  hour  or  two.  We  had  noth- 
ing to  eat  ourselves.  The  thieves  came  up  and  stopped, 


18  WHEN  KANSAS  WAS  YOUNG 

also.  One  of  our  party  carried  a  three-band  Sharp's  needle 
gun  and  a  belt  full  of  cartridges.  A  gun  of  that  kind  was 
a  very  valuable  asset  in  those  days,  although  dangerous  at 
both  ends  when  fired.  The  thieves  coveted  this  gun  so 
much  that  they  were  willing  at  one  time  to  measure 
strength  with  our  party  to  get  it.  They  even  demanded  it, 
and  finally  said  that  if  we  didn't  give  it  up,  they  would 
take  it  just  the  same.  Everybody  was  ready  on  our  side 
for  them  to  open  the  ball,  when  Bill  Hackney,  who  then 
was  in  his  prime,  opened  up  on  the  thieves  in  characteristic 
Hackney  style.  I  have  heard  Bill  cuss  a  good  many  times, 
but  never  heard  him  do  as  artistic  a  job  as  he  did  that  day. 
The  rest  of  us  were  no  mollycoddles,  but  Bill's  language 
almost  made  us  shudder.  In  substance,  Bill  spoke  as 

follows:  'If  you sons  of want  that  gun,  come 

and  get  it,  but  I  want  to  say  that  if  one  of  you  makes  a 
move  in  that  direction,  there  will  be  a  lot  of  dead  horse 
thieves  left  here  on  the  ground  for  buzzard  feed/ 

"Bill's  defiance  had  its  effect.  The  thieves  looked  Bill 
and  the  rest  of  the  party  over  and  decided  that  the  job 
was  too  dangerous.  Had  the  fight  commenced  we  might 
have  lost  some  of  our  party,  but  that  whole  bunch  of  thieves 
would  almost  certainly  have  died,  which  would  have  saved 
a  lynching  party  the  trouble  of  hanging  two  of  them  a  few 
days  after  that  on  Slate  Creek. 

"The  first  murder  that  was  committed  in  Wellington," 
continued  the  mayor,  "was  in  May,  1872.  It  resulted  in 
a  lynching  and  as  a  rather  singular  coincidence  the  man 
lynched  was  named  Lynch;  also  it  may  be  said  in  passing 
that  Lynch  was  lynched  for  the  murder  of  a  man  he  did 
not  kill.  True,  he  probably  deserved  hanging  on  general 
principles,  but  he  was  not  guilty  of  that  particular  crime. 

"Two  hunters,  named  Smith  and  Blanchard,  known  as 
'Red  Shirt,'  on  account  of  the  fiery  red  shirt  he  wore,  came 
to  town  and  were  painting  it  red,  drinking  and  gambling. 
During  the  day  they  met  Lynch,  a  gambler  and  all-round 
tough,  who  owned  a  race  horse  and  went  swaggering 
around  with  a  pair  of  revolvers  belted  on  as  part  of  his 
dress. 

"The  four  continued  drinking,  gambling,  and  quarreling 


HAPPENINGS  IN  THE  SEVENTIES        19 

all  afternoon  and  evening,  and  about  nine  o'clock  Smith 
and  Lynch  drew  their  guns,  but  were  prevented  from 
shooting  at  the  time,  and  both  left  the  saloon,  each  swear- 
ing he  would  get  the  other.  Lynch,  with  his  gun  in  his 
hand,  went  out  at  the  north  front  door  and  turned  east, 
stopping  a  few  feet  east  of  the  door,  where  he  was  in  the 
shadow  and  could  watch  the  front  door  of  the  saloon.  He 
had  been  there  only  a  few  minutes  when  Smith  stepped 
to  the  front  door.  Lynch,  without  warning,  fired  at  him 
from  a  distance  of  not  more  than  ten  feet.  The  ball  struck 
the  outside  door  casing,  plowed  through  the  soft  pine  for 
about  eight  inches  and  struck  Smith  in  the  breast,  going 
through  his  outside  clothing  and  lodging  against  his  under- 
shirt. Lynch,  no  doubt,  supposing  that  he  had  killed  his 
man,  ran  across  the  public  square  in  a  northwesterly  direc- 
tion, firing  two  more  shots  as  he  ran.  He  was  evidently 
carrying  both  his  guns  cocked  and  pointed  downward,  and 
must  have  unconsciously  pulled  the  triggers  in  his  excite- 
ment. As  a  result,  he  put  a  bullet  through  each  of  his 
feet.  When  Smith  was  hit  he  jumped  back  inside  the 
saloon  exclaiming,  'I  am  shot,'  but  finding  that  he  was  not 
hurt  much,  he  jerked  out  his  gun  and  ran  out  of  the  south 
rear  door  of  the  saloon,  looking  for  Lynch.  He  saw  a  man 
standing  just  east  and  in  line  with  the  saloon  and,  suppos- 
ing it  was  Lynch,  fired,  killing  a  man  by  the  name  of 
Maxwell,  who  lived  on  the  Chickaskia  River,  not  far  from 
Drury. 

"Maxwell  had  come  to  town  on  an  errand  of  mercy  and 
charity,  to  solicit  aid  for  two  of  his  unfortunate  neighbors 
and  their  families  who  had  had  the  misfortune  to  lose 
everything  they  had  in  the  way  of  buildings,  furniture,  and 
feed  in  a  terrible  prairie  fire.  When  Smith  saw  the  mistake 
he  had  made,  he  determined  to  fasten  the  crime  on  Lynch, 
and  with  the  aid  of  his  pal  'Red  Shirt,'  he  succeeded  in 
making  the  people  believe  that  Maxwell  had  been  killed 
by  Lynch.  Maxwell  was  a  good  man,  popular  with  his 
neighbors,  and  his  murder  aroused  great  indignation.  Next 
day  his  neighbors  began  arriving  in  town.  By  midnight 
there  were  more  than  a  hundred  of  them.  Meantime  Smith 
and  Blanchard,  'Red  Shirt,'  having  succeeded  in  throwing 


20  WHEN  KANSAS  WAS  YOUNG 

the  blame  for  the  killing  on  Lynch,  decided  that  they  would 
get  out  of  town  while  the  getting  was  good.  The  settlers, 
neighbors  of  the  dead  man,  while  perhaps  not  doubting 
that  it  was  Lynch  who  fired  the  fatal  shot,  felt  that  in  a 
way  the  other  two  were  partly  responsible  for  the  murder 
and  insisted  that  they  should  be  arrested.  A  posse  started 
after  them,  followed  them  for  thirty  or  forty  miles,  and 
then  lost  their  trail.  Lynch  had  been  arrested  and  kept  in 
concealment  by  the  officers,  but  early  Sunday  morning  the 
^earchers  discovered  where  he  was  hidden  and  he  was  taken 
in  charge  by  the  vigilance  committee.  Lynch  realized  that 
death  was  near  and  sent  for  a  lawyer  to  make  his  will. 
D.  N.  Caldwell,  then  a  young  man  out  of  law  school,  de- 
clined the  job.  He  said  that  he  was  young  and  inexperi- 
enced and  it  would  be  better  to  get  an  old  lawyer  to  do  the 
job.  So  Judge  Riggs  was  sent  for,  drew  the  last  will  and 
testament  of  the  condemned  man,  who  bequeathed  all  of 
his  property  to  a  sister  living  in  another  state.  With  the 
preliminaries  disposed  of  at  the  command  of  the  leader,  the 
mob  of  one  hundred  men  or  more  marched  quietly  to  where 
Lynch  was  being  held,  placed  him  on  his  own  horse  and 
with  a  double  row  of  guards  on  either  side  he  was  taken 
down  to  the  timber  on  Slate  Creek,  where  a  rope  was  placed 
about  his  neck  and  fastened  to  a  limb,  and  then  his  horse 
was  led  away.  Although  the  real  murderer  was  not  hanged, 
the  execution  had  a  salutary  effect  on  evil  doers  for  years 
afterward.  Still  it  can  hardly  be  said  that  justice  has  been 
satisfied,  for  the  man  who  did  murder  Maxwell  still  lives. 

"The  body  of  Lynch  was  buried  in  the  Potters'  Field  at 
the  old  cemetery  and  for  many  years  those  passing  along 
the  road  were  shown  a  low  lying  mound  marking  the  grave 
where  rested  the  body  of  the  first  man  hung  for  murder  in 
Sumner  County." 

The  Looting  of  a  County 

If  ever  there  was  a  municipal  organization  conceived 
in  sin  and  brought  forth  in  iniquity  it  was  the  organi- 
zation of  Barber  County.  During  the  early  seventies 


HAPPENINGS  IN  THE  SEVENTIES       21 

it  occurred  to  a  number  of  enterprising  thieves  that 
the  organization  of  counties  in  central  and  western 
Kansas  offered  an  inviting  field  for  exploitation  at 
comparatively  little  risk  to  the  exploiters.  There  were 
practically  no  permanent  residents  in  that  part  of  the 
state  at  that  time  and  consequently  few  who  had  a 
personal  interest  in  preventing  the  robbery  consum- 
mated under  forms  of  law. 

The  statute  governing  the  organization  of  new 
counties  required  at  that  time  at  least  600  bona  fide 
inhabitants  within  the  territory  to  be  organized.  In 
1872  there  were  probably  not  more  than  100  bona  fide 
inhabitants  in  the  territory  included  within  the  boun- 
daries of  the  proposed  county,  but  that  fact  presented 
no  impediment  to  the  predatory  gang  which  had  per- 
fected its  plan  of  loot.  A  census  taker  was  appointed 
who  was  void  of  either  conscience  or  fear  of  future 
punishment,  and  from  convenient  hotel  registers  he 
copied  the  requisite  number  of  names,  swore  that  they 
were  bona  fide  residents  within  the  territory  of  the  pro- 
posed county,  and  the  preliminaries  were  arranged  with 
an  ease  and  speed  which  would  have  excited  the  envy 
of  a  professional  highwayman. 

There  were  some  honest  men  even  then  living  in  the 
territory  which  now  composes  the  county  of  Barber, 
but  as  I  have  intimated,  they  had  no  vested  interest  in 
the  country.  They  were  the  possessors  of  herds  of 
cattle  of  varying  size,  grazing  on  the  native  grasses, 
but  they  did  not  expect  to  remain  permanently  in  that 
country.  Unfortunately  most  men  are  so  constituted 
that  they  do  not  become  deeply  concerned  about  graft 
unless  that  graft  touches  them  in  some  way.  So  the 
conditions  were  particularly  favorable  for  the  high- 
binders who  figured  out  a  scheme  of  organizing  coun- 
ties, loading  them  with  bonds,  selling  the  bonds  to  sup- 
posed innocent  purchasers,  pocketing  the  proceeds  and, 


22  WHEN  KANSAS  WAS  YOUNG 

when  the  harvest  of  loot  had  been  gathered,  folding 
their  tents  like  the  Arab  and  silently  stealing  away. 

The  first  meeting  of  the  new  board  of  county  com- 
missioners, so  far  as  the  records  show,  was  held  in 
Medicine  Lodge  on  July  7,  1873.  These  commissioners 
were  not  the  master  spirits  in  the  conspiracy,  but  they 
were  willing  servants  and  showed  the  industry  of  the 
busy  bee,  which  flits  from  flower  to  flower  gathering 
honey  as  it  flits.  About  the  first  business  of  impor- 
tance transacted  was  to  issue  $25,000  in  county  war- 
rants to  one  C.  C.  Beemis,  in  consideration  of  which 
he  was  supposed  to  build  a  court  house.  It,  of  course, 
showed  great  confidence  in  the  integrity  of  Mr.  Beemis 
to  issue  to  him  the  entire  contract  price  before  he  had 
furnished  a  brick,  a  board,  or  a  nail  that  was  to  go 
into  the  building,  but  the  confidence  seemed  to  have 
been  misplaced,  as  Mr.  Beemis  did  not  even  commence 
the  erection  of  the  court  house.  His  failure,  however, 
did  not  interfere  with  the  friendly  relations  or  confi- 
dence of  the  board  of  commissioners,  who  made  no 
effort  to  compel  him  to  fulfill  his  contract  or  return 
the  warrants  which  had  been  issued.  In  fact  the  com- 
missioners acted  on  the  theory  that  if  at  first  you  don't 
succeed  try,  try  again,  and  next  time  proposed  to 
vote  bonds  to  build  a  court  house  to  the  extent  of 
$40,000.  By  that  time  some  of  the  residents  of  the 
county,  although  temporary,  objected  to  the  issuance 
of  more  bonds  or  warrants  to  build  a  court  house,  in 
view  of  the  fact  that  $25,000  had  already  been  stolen, 
and  they  rallied  enough  votes  to  defeat  the  bonds. 
This,  however,  did  not  dash  or  discourage  the  com- 
missioners, who  issued  the  warrants  anyhow,  and  then 
through  an  act  of  the  Legislature  put  through  by  the 
leader  of  the  gang,  the  first  legislative  member  from 
Barber,  they  issued  funding  bonds  to  cover  the  debt. 
Still  no  court  house  was  built.  Not  a  brick  was  laid 


HAPPENINGS  IN  THE  SEVENTIES       23 

or  a  single  foundation  stone.  The  busy  board  had  also 
issued  some  forty  or  fifty  thousand  dollars  in  warrants 
to  build  bridges  and,  considering  the  number  of  streams 
there  are  in  the  county,  I  have  no  doubt  they  were 
astonished  at  their  own  moderation. 

The  bridges  were  not  built,  but  then  they  might  have 
stolen  more.  At  the  instance  of  members  of  the  gang 
a  railroad  corporation  called  the  Nebraska,  Kansas  & 
Southwestern  was  organized.  Not  only  in  the  lan- 
guage of  a  former  member  of  the  Kansas  Legislature 
did  this  road  "not  terminate  at  either  end"  but  it  had 
no  existence  except  on  paper.  Yet  the  looters  man- 
aged to  put  over  an  alleged  bond  election  by  which  the 
new  county  voted  $100,000  ten  per  cent  bonds  to  this 
mythical  corporation  and  then,  in  violation  of  the  spirit 
if  not  the  letter  of  the  law  under  which  the  road  was 
supposed  to  be  built  before  the  bonds  were  issued,  the 
board  of  commissioners  issued  and  sold  the  bonds  with- 
out there  being  a  single  mile  of  road  constructed.  The 
bonds  passed  into  the  hands  of  an  English  capitalist,  a 
member  of  the  British  Parliament.  Afterward  the  tax- 
payers of  Barber  resisted  payment  of  the  bonds,  and 
carried  the  litigation  through  the  courts  up  to  the  su- 
preme court,  but  they  lost  in  the  end  and  are  to-day 
paying  the  principal  and  interest  of  that  utterly  fraud- 
ulent obligation. 

Finally,  the  shameless  stealings  of  the  looters  roused 
the  fury  of  the  settlers,  who  were  coming  to  look  on 
the  county,  with  its  clear  streams,  its  beautiful  valleys, 
its  sweet  hills  and  groves  and  canyons  as  their  perma- 
nent abiding  place.  So  they  formed  their  vigilance 
committee,  with  the  avowed  and  laudable  purpose  of 
hanging  the  thieves.  They  did  round  up  a  part  of  the 
gang,  but  made  the  fatal  error  of  permitting  them  to 
talk.  The  spokesman  for  the  gang  offered  to  restore 
the  loot  already  taken  and  to  leave  the  county  forever. 


24  WHEN  KANSAS  WAS  YOUNG 

They  did  leave  the  county,  but  took  with  them  the 
county  warrant  books  and  county  seal,  and  from  the 
safe  retreat  of  Hutchinson  they  proceeded  to  issue  new 
evidence  of  indebtedness  against  the  sorely  plundered* 
municipality.  Of  course,  it  is  unnecessary  to  say  that 
they  never  restored  any  of  the  plunder  they  had  gar- 
nered under  forms  of  law.  A  member  of  the  vigilance 
committee  was  heard  afterwards  to  remark,  "If  we 
hadn't  been  a  passel  of  dam  fools  we  would  a-hung 
them  blank-blank  sons-of-blank  first  and  then  listened 
to  what  they  had  to  say  afterwards." 

The  Old-Time  Deestrict  School 

"When  I  was  a  boy  going  to  a  country  school,"  said 
an  old  timer,  "we  had  what  was  known  far  and  wide  as 
about  the  toughest  district  school  in  the  state.  There 
were  six  big  boys,  ranging  from  sixteen  to  twenty  or 
twenty-one  years  old.  Most  of  them  were  great,  husky 
fellows  and  one  or  two  would  weigh  fully  175  pounds." 
These  young  fellows  bullied  the  rest  of  the  school,  espe- 
cially the  little  boys,  and  in  school  did  just  about  as 
they  pleased.  They  boasted  that  they  would  whip  any 
teacher  who  undertook  to  make  them  mind  his  rules 
and  it  may  be  said  they  were  ready  and  anxious  to 
make  good  the  threat.  They  usually  intimidated  the 
teacher  and  ran  the  school  according  to  their  own 
notion.  Two  teachers  had  undertaken  to  control  them 
and  were  beaten  up  and  run  out  of  school  as  a  conse- 
quence. The  fame  of  our  school  extended  until  it  was 
difficult  to  get  any  teacher. 

One  fall  day  there  appeared  in  the  neighborhood  a 
rather  small,  although  trimly  built  young  man,  who 
said  that  he  was  an  applicant  for  the  job  of  teaching 
school.  The  leading  director  looked  him  over  and  then 
said : 


HAPPENINGS  IN  THE  SEVENTIES       25 

"I  guess,  young  man,  that  you  never  have  heard 
much  about  this  school  or  you  wouldn't  hanker  after 
the  job.  There  are  at  least  six  boys  in  our  school 
bigger  than  you  and  any  one  of  them,  I  think,  could 
handle  you  in  a  fight,  unless  you  are  a  much  better 
man  than  you  look  to  be.  The  boys  are  tarnal  mean, 
and  I  would  be  glad  to  see  a  teacher  who  could  trim 
them  as  they  deserve,  but  you  haven't  the  heft  to 
handle  the  job  and  get  away  with  it.  Last  winter  the 
teacher  lasted  just  two  weeks.  Then  them  pesky 
youngsters  took  him  out  and  ducked  him  in  the  pond 
and  told  him  to  hit  the  road  away  from  the  school- 
house  and  keep  goin',  which  he  did.  Winter  before 
last  we  got  a  big  fellow  to  teach  the  school,  who  had 
something  of  a  reputation  as  a  fighter.  He  did  a 
great  deal  of  talkin'  about  how  he  would  bring  the 
boys  to  time,  but  when  it  came  to  the  test  the  boys 
combined  and  beat  him  up  and  whipped  him  till  he 
had  to  go  to  bed  for  a  week.  He  quit  right  then.  He 
would  weigh  fifty  pounds  more  than  you  and  if  he 
couldn't  handle  the  job  I  don't  see  no  chance  for  you." 

The  young  man  listened  quietly  and  replied  mildly 
that  he  didn't  think  he  would  have  any  serious  trouble 
with  these  young  men ;  that  he  always  got  along  pretty 
well  with  young  folks,  especially  with  boys,  and  that 
he  would  like  to  have  a  chance  to  see  what  he  could  do. 

"Well,"  said  the  old  farmer-director,  "I  will  call 
the  board  together  and  present  your  application.  If 
the  other  two  are  willin'  I  will  give  you  a  trial,  because 
it's  gettin'  to  be  nearly  impossible  to  get  a  teacher, 
but  I  give  you  fair  warnin'  that  I  don't  think  you  will 
last  more  than  a  week,  unless  you  give  in  and  let  them 
fellers  run  the  school." 

Well,  the  directors  finally  concluded  that  they  would 
give  the  slim  young  teacher  a  chance  to  try  his  hand, 
not  that  they  had  any  faith  in  his  ability  to  control 


26  WHEN  KANSAS  WAS  YOUNG 

the  school,  but  the  law  required  that  there  should  be 
a  school  and  there  were  no  other  applicants. 

On  the  first  day  of  school  all  the  big  six  were  on 
hand.  There  was  Bill  Stevens,  who  was  a  leader  of 
the  gang,  twenty  years  old,  and  would  weigh  fully 
175  pounds  and  there  was  no  surplus  flesh.  Jack 
Williams  was  his  second,  nearly  as  big  as  Bill  and  just 
as  mean.  Then  there  was  Tom  Walker,  nineteen  years 
old,  weighed  about  160  pounds;  Elias  Tompkins,  about 
the  same  age  and  weight ;  Lige  Sangers,  eighteen  years 
old,  weighed  abo,ut  150  pounds,  and  Tobe  Elder,  the 
youngest  and  also  one  of  the  meanest  in  the  gang.  He 
was  only  seventeen  years  old  but  he  was  as  big  and 
husky  as  the  average  young  man  when  twenty  years  old. 

They  slouched  into  school  with  Bill  Stevens  in  the 
lead  and  sat  down  with  their  hats  on.  The  young 
slender,  mild-looking  teacher  called  the  school  to  order 
and  then  in  a  gentle  voice  said,  "All  the  pupils  will 
take  off  their  hats,  please.'* 

As  the  members  of  the  gang  did  not  remove  their 
hats,  the  teacher  turning  to  Bill  Stevens  said,  still 
speaking  in  his  easy  mild  tone  of  voice  with  no  trace 
of  excitement  or  irritation : 

"Perhaps  you  young  gentlemen  did  not  understand 
my  request.  I  always  make  it  a  rule  in  my  school  to 
have  all  the  pupils  remove  their  hats." 

"Yes,"  said  Bill  insolently,  "we  heard  you  all  right, 
but  we  ain't  accustomed  to  removin'  our  hats,  we  are 
somewhat  afraid  we  will  ketch  cold  in  the  haid." 

"There  is  no  danger,  I  think,  of  your  catchi'ng  cold 
in  the  head  in  this  house,  at  any  rate  I  guess  we  will 
have  to  risk  it.  I  will  have  to  ask  you  again  to  remove 
your  hats." 

All  the  answer  he  got  was  a  sneering  laugh  from  the 
six.  Not  one  of  them  made  any  move  toward  removing 
his  hat.  Then  a  most  surprising  thing  happened.  The 


HAPPENINGS  IN  THE  SEVENTIES       27 

slender  young  teacher,  with  a  swiftness  that  was  as- 
tounding, kicked  Bill's  hat  from  his  head  and  then 
with  a  lightning  blow  hit  the  big  bully  fair  on  the 
point  of  the  chin,  knocking  him  senseless  to  the  floor. 
The  fight  was  on.  Jack  Williams  came  on  with  a 
bellow  of  rage  and  the  others  joined  the  rush  toward 
the  teacher.  With  surprising  agility  he  avoided  the 
onslaught  and  so  maneuvered  that  Jack  was  separated 
from  his  fellows.  Jack  was  trying  to  clinch,  but  while 
he  had  been  in  many  a  rough  and  tumble  fight  he  knew 
little  about  guarding  his  face,  and  a  smashing  blow  at 
the  butt  of  the  ear  sent  him  to  join  his  leader  in  dream- 
land. The  other  four  were  already  sensing  the  fact 
that  this  was  an  entirely  different  sort  of  a  teacher 
from  any  they  had  ever  had  any  experience  with  here- 
tofore, but  the  fight  was  not  out  of  them  yet. 

"Close  in  on  him,"  yelled  Tom  Walker  and  all  the 
four  tried  to  get  in  together.  As  they  came  on  the 
slender  teacher  deftly  tripped  the  leader  to  the  floor, 
piled  two  others  on  top  of  him  and  smashed  the  face 
of  the  fourth  with  a  blow  that  brought  the  blood  pour- 
ing from  his  nose.  Then  as  fast  as  the  young  fellows 
tried  to  get  up  he  smashed  them,  tripped  them,  and 
mauled  them  until  bloody  and  discomfited  they  were 
ready  to  quit.  By  this  time  Bill  Stevens  was  recover- 
ing consciousness.  He  slowly  staggered  to  his  feet  when 
he  was  floored  with  a  left  to  his  face  and  a  terrific  jolt 
on  his  solar  plexus  with  the  right,  which  not  only  put 
him  down  and  out,  but  left  him  writhing  in  agony.  In 
a  few  minutes  the  fight  was  over.  The  slender  teacher 
was  -breathing  a  little  more  quickly  than  under  ordi- 
nary conditions,  but  there  was  not  a  mark  of  the  con- 
flict on  his  person  and  his  voice  showed  no  indication 
of  excitement. 

"Take  your  seats,  young  gentlemen,"  he  said  quietly 
and  they  did.  "Remove  your  hats/'  The  hats  went 


28  WHEN  KANSAS  WAS  YOUNG 

off.  "There  is  the  basin  which  I  brought  to  school 
this  morning  and  there  is  the  water.  William  Stevens, 
if  you  feel  able  to  walk,  go  and  wash  your  face  and 
hands  and  then  return  to  your  seat  quietly."  Bill 
staggered  to  the  water  pail  and  proceeded  dizzily  with 
his  ablutions.  He  was  followed  in  regular  order  by 
the  other  members  of  the  gang.  And  then  a  most 
crestfallen  and  battered  six  waited  for  further  orders. 

"Young  gentlemen,"  said  the  teacher,  "this  has  been 
an  interesting  and  I  may  say  enjoyable  occasion.  Dur- 
ing my  six  years  as  trainer  in  boxing,  wrestling,  and 
general  athletics,  I  never  have  experienced  a  more  ex- 
hilarating five  minutes,  but  I  must  say  that  while  you 
have  the  making  of  fairly  good  boxers,  that  is,  some 
of  you  have,  you  are  very  deficient  in  knowledge  of  the 
manly  art.  During  the  winter  I  expect  to  give  you 
some  instruction  in  the  art  of  self-defense,  but  only  on 
one  condition  and  that  is  that  you  learn  to  be  good 
sports.  The  really  good  sport  is  always  a  gentleman. 
He  will  not  strike  a  foul  blow  or  take  advantage  of  a 
weaker  opponent.  You  young  men  have  not  been  good 
sports.  You  have  joined  your  forces  and  whipped 
teachers  who  were  no  more  than  a  match  for  any  one 
of  you  and  have  gloried  in  bullying  the  school.  Now  I 
wish  to  have  an  understanding.  Have  you  had  enough? 
If  not  we  will  settle  this  right  now,  but  I  promise  you 
in  advance  that  when  I  finish  with  you,  you  will  not  be 
able  to  attend  school  for  several  days.  What  do  you 
say?" 

Bill  Stevens  spoke  for  the  gang.  His  words  came 
from  between  badly  puffed  lips,  as  he  gazed  at  the 
teacher  from  eyes  that  were  fast  closing.  "You're  a 
he  man,  all  right,  though  you  don't  look  it.  Whatever 
you  say  goes  with  this  gang." 

That  term  of  school  worked  a  complete  reformation 
on  the  bullies.  They  were  diligent  in  attendance  and 


HAPPENINGS  IN  THE  SEVENTIES       29 

most  of  them  made  good  progress.  Bill  Stevens  after- 
ward went  to  college  and  became  a  leading  business 
man  in  the  city  in  which  he  located.  In  after  life  he 
often  said :  "That  was  the  most  painful  and  most  prof- 
itable five  minutes  I  ever  spent  in  my  life." 


The  Downfall  of  Pomeroy 

In  the  legislative  session  of  1873  the  senatorial  elec- 
tion so  overshadowed  every  other  issue  that  little  if 
anything  is  remembered  of  what  was  accomplished  in 
the  way  of  general  legislation.  The  great  question  to 
be  decided  was  the  election  or  defeat  of  Samuel  C. 
Pomeroy  for  the  United  States  Senate. 

Pomeroy  had  served  twelve  years  as  senator  and 
had  a  powerful  political  following,  but  he  had  also 
powerful  and  adroit  opposition.  It  was  less  than  eight 
years  after  the  close  of  the  Civil  War  and  the  veterans 
of  that  great  conflict,  still  young  and  virile  men,  con- 
trolled the  political  and  also,  for  the  most  part,  all 
other  enterprises  of  the  state.  Pomeroy  was,  as  men 
went  then,  considered  rather  an  old  man,  although  only 
fifty-seven  years  of  age,  and  still  a  man  of  powerful 
physique.  During  the  noted  dry  year  of  1860  he  had 
been  very  active  in  securing  aid  for  the  Kansas  set- 
tlers, especially  corn,  on  account  of  which  he  was 
dubbed  "Seed  Corn  Pomeroy,"  a  play  on  the  initials 
of  his  name. 

In  that  early  day  Kansas  was  divided  politically 
into  factions  and  they  warred  with  each  other  with  a 
bitterness  unknown  in  these  modern  times.  The  oppo- 
nents of  Pomeroy  accused  him  of  corruption  and  im- 
morality, while  his  friends  and  ardent  supporters  in- 
sisted that  he  was  a  paragon  of  virtue  and  an  incor- 
ruptible patriot.  The  opposition  was  led  by  perhaps 


30  WHEN  KANSAS  WAS  YOUNG 

the  most  adroit  politician  in  Kansas  at  that  time, 
Major  Ben  F.  Simpson,  who  numbered  among  his  lieu- 
tenants such  men  as  W.  A.  Johnson,  senator  from 
Anderson  County;  Colonel  John  P.  St.  John,  after- 
wards governor,  and  three  times  candidate  for  presi- 
dent on  the  Prohibition  ticket;  Colonel  Tom  Moon- 
light, of  Leavenworth,  still  the  idol  of  the  men  who  had 
followed  him  through  his  campaigns  and  battles; 
Colonel  A.  M.  York,  of  Montgomery;  Colonel  Ely,  of 
Linn,  and  Captain  George  R.  Peck,  then  a  brilliant 
and  rising  young  lawyer.  Among  other  men  of  promi- 
nence in  that  legislature  were  Colonel  Marsh  Murdock, 
General  Blair,  N.  C.  McFarland,  afterwards  commis- 
sioner of  the  general  land  office,  and  Rev.  I.  S.  Kallock, 
whose  sincerity  and  morality  were  sometimes  ques- 
tioned, but  whose  singular  eloquence  was  always  con- 
ceded. Pomeroy's  campaign  manager  was  Albert  H. 
Horton,  afterward  himself  a  candidate  for  senator  and 
for  many  years  chief  justice  of  the  supreme  court. 

While  the  fight  was  bitter,  the  supporters  of  Pome- 
roy,  counting  perhaps  on  the  divisions  among  the  op- 
position, seemed  reasonably  confident  of  success,  but 
were  not  taking  any  chances  if  they  knew  it.  There 
were  numerous  stories  floating  about  of  attempts  to 
bribe  the  supporters  of  other  candidates  and  finally 
a  trap  was  laid  for  the  senator,  planned  by  Ben  Simp- 
son, which  resulted  in  the  complete  overthrow  of  Pome- 
roy,  his  retirement  in  disgrace  from  public  life,  and  a 
narrow  escape  from  a  felon's  cell.  In  pursuance  of 
this  plan,  Colonel  York  called  on  Pomeroy  at  his  room 
in  the  old  Tefft  House,  located  where  the  National  now 
is,  in  the  dead  hour  of  the  night  and  there  bargained 
with  him  to  sell  his  vote  at  the  coming  joint  conven- 
tion of  the  Senate  and  House,  then  only  two  days  off, 
in  consideration  of  the  payment  of  $8,000,  to  be  paid 
$2,000  down,  $5,000  the  next  day  and  $1,000  after 


HAPPENINGS  IN  THE  SEVENTIES       31 

the  vote  was  cast.     In  accordance  with  this  agreement, 
the  story  goes,  Pomeroy  paid  over  the  $7,000. 

On  January  29,  1873,  the  two  houses  met  in  joint 
convention.  Old  timers  say  that  there  was  certain 
tenseness  in  the  atmosphere,  a  foreboding  of  the  com- 
ing storm.  When  the  convention  was  called  to  order, 
Colonel  York  advanced  to  the  front  and  laid  on  the 
table  two  packages  of  money  which  he  claimed  he  had 
received  from  Pomeroy  and  with  dramatic  earnestness 
gave  in  detail  to  the  convention  his  deal  with  the 
senator.  That  speech  would  have  been  lost  to  the  world 
if  it  had  not  been  for  a  young  and  brilliant  reporter, 
afterwards  one  of  the  most  successful  lawyers  in  Kan- 
sas or  the  West — Colonel  W.  H.  Rossington,  who  was 
reporting  for  the  old  Commonwealth.  York  had  no 
written  speech.  Rossington  recognized  the  news  value 
of  the  same  to  his  story  of  the  sensational  event,  and 
sitting  down  at  his  desk  wrote  the  following  remarkable 
speech  as  that  delivered  by  the  senator  from  Mont- 
gomery : 

"Before  I  place  in  nomination  the  name  of  any  man,  I 
have  a  short  explanation  to  make,  and  as  it  concerns  all 
present  and  is  of  great  importance  to  the  state  of  Kansas, 
present  and  future,  I  desire  the  close  attention  of  the  mem- 
bers of  the  convention  to  what  I  have  to  say.  Two  weeks 
ago  to-day  I  came  to  Topeka  an  avowed  and  earnest  anti- 
Pomeroy  man.  I  thought  that  in  his  defeat  lay  the  regen- 
eration of  the  state  and  party  and  I  cheerfully  and  enthusi- 
astically allied  myself  with  the  anti-Pomeroy  element  in  the 
legislature.  Grave  charges  had  been  made  against  Senator 
Pomeroy  in  connection  with  a  certain  letter  to  W.  W.  Ross. 
These  charges  had  assumed  a  serious  form  in  a  meeting  of 
the  anti-Pomeroy  caucus  a  few  evenings  ago  when  a  man 
by  the  name  of  Clark  exhibited  $2,000  in  twenty  $100  bills, 
declaring  that  he  had  received  the  same  from  Pomeroy  for 
signing  a  confession  to  the  effect  that  he  had  forged  the 
letter  (to  Ross)  and  the  signature.  I  have  no  evidence  as 


32  WHEN  KANSAS  WAS  YOUNG 

to  the  truth  of  these  charges,  but  Mr.  Pomeroy's  name  being 
associated  with  so  many  rumors  of  the  same  nature  might 
give  the  report  credence. 

"When  I  came  here  I  had  been  waited  on  by  friends  of 
Mr.  Pomeroy  who  plied  me  with  arguments  in  favor  of  his 
preeminent  fitness  for  the  position  and  protestations  of  his 
innocence  of  the  charges  brought  against  him.  I  was  asked 
several  times  to  have  an  interview  with  Mr.  Pomeroy  and 
finally  consented,  provided  this  interview  could  take  place 
in  the  presence  of  a  third  party.  Mr.  Pomeroy  assented 
to  the  presence  of  one  or  any  number  of  my  friends.  Ac- 
cordingly on  Friday  last  I  waited  on  Mr.  Pomeroy  and 
there,  in  the  presence  of  Captain  Peck  and  two  others,  we 
had  a  brief  conversation.  I  put  to  him  direct  the  question: 
'Did  you  or  did  you  not  write  the  letter  signed  with  your 
name  and  directed  to  W.  W.  Ross  having  reference  to  cer- 
tain profits  on  Indian  goods?'  In  reply  he  handed  me  the 
affidavits  of  J.  B.  Stewart  and  one  signed  by  several  citi- 
zens of  Lawrence  and  asked  me  to  read  them  and  then  say 
whether  I  thought  he  was  the  author  of  the  letter.  'Mr. 
Pomeroy,  you  have  not  said  whether  you  wrote  that  Ross 
letter/  I  then  said  further  to  him:  'Mr.  Pomeroy,  you  are 
either  the  most  infamous  scoundrel  that  ever  trod  the  earth 
or  the  worst  defamed  man  that  ever  stepped  on  Kansas  soil.' 
Here  the  interview  ended  and,  as  I  supposed,  ended  all  rela- 
tions between  myself  and  Mr.  Pomeroy,  but  a  day  or  two 
afterward  I  was  importuned  to  accord  Mr.  Pomeroy  a  pri- 
vate interview.  At  the  time  it  had  become  apparent  that 
illicit  and  criminal  means  had  been  employed  to  secure  Mr. 
Pomeroy's  election  and  it  became  us  as  far  as  it  lay  in  our 
power  to  circumvent  them.  I  consulted  with  tried  and 
trusted  friends,  Messrs.  Simpson,  Wilson,  Johnson,  and 
others  as  to  the  course  I  should  pursue  and  upon  their  ad- 
vice I  acted.  I  visited  Mr.  Pomeroy's  room  in  the  dark  and 
secret  recess  of  the  Tefft  House  on  Monday  night  and  at 
that  interview  my  vote  was  bargained  for  for  a  considera- 
tion of  $8,000:  $2,000  of  which  was  paid  that  evening, 
$5,000  the  next  afternoon  and  a  promise  of  the  additional 
$1,000  when  my  vote  had  been  cast  in  his  favor. 

"I  now,  in  the  presence  of  this  honorable  body  hand  over 


HAPPENINGS  IN  THE  SEVENTIES       33 

the  amount  of  $7,000  as  I  received  it  and  ask  that  it  be 
counted  by  the  secretary.  I  ask  that  the  money  be  used  to 
defray  the  expenses  of  investigating  and  prosecuting  S.  C. 
Pomeroy  for  bribery  and  corruption. 

"I  know  that  there  are  many  present  who  may  feel  dis- 
posed to  impugn  my  motives  in  this  matter  and  decry  the 
manner  of  my  unearthing  the  deep  and  damning  rascality, 
which  has  eaten  like  a  plague  spot  into  the  fair  name  of 
this  glorious  young  state.  I  am  conscious  that,  standing 
here  as  I  do  a  self-convicted  bribe  taker,  I  take  upon  my- 
self vicariously  the  odium  that  has  made  the  name  of  Kan- 
sas and  Kansas  politics  a  hissing  and  a  byword  throughout 
the  land.  I  do  not  undertake  the  defense  of  my  act  any 
further  than  it  may  convey  with  it  its  own  justification. 
From  every  part  of  the  state  comes  the  demand  thunder- 
toned  and  unanimous  from  the  masses,  whose  will  has  so 
long  been  disregarded  and  oversloughed  by  the  corrupt  use 
of  money  by  individuals  and  corporations,  that  we  make  a 
final  and  irrevocable  end  of  corruptionists.  In  this  matter 
I  have  had  the  unpleasant  and  unenviable  sensation  of 
handling  pitch  which  defileth,  but  my  feelings  were  second- 
ary to  the  common  weal.  In  fact  they  were  not  taken  into 
account.  In  a  solemn  exigency  and  forlorn  hope  of  this 
kind  I  consider  it  a  man's  highest  duty,  in  however  ques- 
tionable guise  his  service  comes,  to  man  the  breach  and  if 
such  a  course  needs  its  atoning  victim  I  would  gladly  offer 
myself  a  sacrifice.  I  promised  in  consideration  of  $8,000 
in  hand  paid  to  vote  for  Samuel  C.  Pomeroy  and  I  now  re- 
deem that  pledge  by  voting  for  him  to  serve  a  term  in  the 
penitentiary  not  to  exceed  twenty  years. 

"Mr.  President  and  gentlemen,  this  is  no  new  thing  in 
the  history  of  Kansas  politics,  I  am  pained  to  say.  In 
every  senatorial  election  has  the  same  thing  been  repeated 
to  our  discomfiture  and  discredit,  the  will  of  the  people  as 
expressed  at  the  ballot  box  has  been  defeated  with  money  at 
this  husting.  This  dishonored  and  dishonorable  official  ap- 
proaches me,  gentlemen,  with  confidence  in  his  ability  to 
buy  men's  souls ;  to  prostitute  their  sacred  honor.  I  have  a 
name  I  am  proud  to  say,  that  up  to  this  time,  with  those 
who  know  me,  has  been  free  from  reproach.  Though  a 


34  WHEN  KANSAS  WAS  YOUNG 

young  man  I  have  striven  to  lead  a  reputable  life  and  to  be 
an  exemplary  member  of  society  as  far  as  my  limited  in- 
fluence extends  in  deed  as  well  as  in  thought.  I  have  an 
aged  mother  who  has  been  spared  to  bless  me  with  her  love. 
I  have  a  wife  and  little  ones  to  whom  I  hope  to  bequeath 
a  name,  no  matter  how  obscure,  they  may  have  no  reason  to 
blush  to  hear  pronounced;  yet  this  corrupt  old  man  comes 
to  me  and  makes  a  bargain  for  my  soul ;  makes  me  a  propo- 
sition which  if  accepted  in  the  faith  and  spirit  in  which  it  is 
offered,  will  make  my  children  go  through  life  with  hung 
down  heads  and  burning  cheeks  at  every  mention  of  the 
name  of  him  who  begot  them.  Earth  has  no  infamy  more 
damnable  than  corruption,  no  criminal  more  to  be  execrated 
than  he  who  would  corrupt  the  representatives  of  the  people 
to  further  his  private  interests.  I  demand,  gentlemen,  that 
the  actions  of  Samuel  C.  Pomeroy  be  thoroughly  examined 
and  that  the  corruption  money  which  lies  on  the  table  be  the 
instrument  of  retribution  in  prosecuting  that  investigation. 
I  further  demand  that  the  members  of  this  body  give  to-day 
such  an  expression  of  their  sentiments  in  this  matter  that 
the  regeneration  of  this  glorious  young  commonwealth  may 
be  proclaimed  throughout  the  land,  so  that  Kansas  may 
stand  erect  and  free  among  the  states  of  the  union,  pure 
among  the  purest  and  honored  throughout  the  world. 

"The  statements  I  have  made,  gentlemen,  are  but  partial 
and  incomplete.  The  hour  or  two  that  I  passed  in  that 
den  of  infamy  in  the  Tefft  House  let  in  upon  my  mind  such 
a  flood  of  enlightenment  as  to  the  detestable  practices  of  the 
Kansas  politicians  that  I  have  no  word  to  express  the  depth 
of  degradation  a  once  pure  republican  government  has 
reached.  The  disclosures  there  made  to  me  implicate  some 
of  the  most  prominent  and  respectable  men  in  Kansas.  I 
learned  from  Mr.  Pomeroy  that  his  spies  and  emissaries 
were  working  in  our  caucuses  to  sell  us  out.  These  disclo- 
sures I  will  not  now  make;  they  are  sufficient  to  satisfy  me 
that  the  most  conscienceless,  infamous  betrayer  of  the  trust 
reposed  in  him  by  the  people  of  his  state  is  Samuel  C. 
Pomeroy.  As  to  the  truth  of  what  I  have  stated,  I  stand  in 
the  presence  of  this  august  and  honorable  body  of  repre- 
sentatives of  the  sovereign  people  and  before  the  Almighty 


HAPPENINGS  IN  THE  SEVENTIES        35 

ruler  of  the  universe  I  solemnly  declare  that  every  word 
I  have  spoken  is  God's  truth  and  nothing  but  the  truth." 

The  immediate  effect  of  this  speech  was  like  a  solar 
plexus  blow  to  the  supporters  of  Pomeroy.  Some  of 
his  supporters  rallied  feebly  to  his  defense  but  they 
could  not  reorganize  his  disrupted  forces  and  amid  in- 
tense excitement  John  J.  Ingalls  was  elected  to  the 
United  States  Senate. 

Afterward  a  committee  was  appointed  by  the  United 
States  Senate  to  investigate  the  conduct  of  Pomeroy, 
with  a  view  to  expelling  him  from  that  body  if  the 
charges  were  found  to  be  true.  The  special  committee 
appointed  to  make  the  investigation  was  composed  of 
Senators  Frelinghuysen,  Buckingham,  Alcorn,  Vickers 
and  Allen  G.  Thurman.  Pomeroy  did  not  deny  giving 
the  money  to  Senator  York,  but  claimed  that  he  had 
given  it  to  him  to  be  turned  over  to  a  man  by  the  name 
of  Page  who  intended  to  start  a  national  bank  in  Inde- 
pendence, and  to  whom  Pomeroy  had  agreed  to  make  a 
temporary  loan.  That  a  business  transaction  of  this 
character  should  have  been  consummated  at  the  hour 
of  midnight  or  later,  less  than  forty-eight  hours  before 
the  vote  on  senator  was  to  be  taken,  must  have  struck 
the  members  of  the  special  committee  as  decidedly 
peculiar  if  true,  but  after  taking  a  good  deal  of  testi- 
mony the  committee  brought  in  a  sort  of  Scotch  verdict 
of  guilty  but  not  proven.  Senator  Thurman  brought 
in  a  minority  report  in  which  he  said  that  the  testi- 
mony convinced  him  that  the  charges  against  Pomeroy 
were  true.  No  doubt  the  fact  that  Pomeroy  had  been 
defeated  for  reelection  and  his  term  would  end  in  a 
few  weeks  influenced  the  members  of  the  committee. 

Pomeroy  retired  disgraced  and  broken.  He  lived, 
however,  for  eighteen  years,  during  which  time  he  saw 
the  rise  of  his  successor  to  a  place  of  great  prominence 


36  WHEN  KANSAS  WAS  YOUNG 

in  the  Senate,  only  finally  to  be  swept  out  of  office  and 
out  of  power  by  the  rise  of  a  new  political  party  in 
Kansas.  About  the  time  that  Pomeroy,  an  old  and 
feeble  man,  was  on  his  deathbed,  John  J.  Ingalls,  the 
most  brilliant  representative  ever  sent  to  either  house 
of  Congress  from  Kansas,  was  watching  his  political 
sun  set  never  to  rise  again. 

Senator  York,  the  instrument  of  Pomeroy's  undoing, 
whether  he  meant  it  or  not,  correctly  indicated  the 
effect  on  him  personally  of  his  act.  His  political  ca- 
reer ended  with  that  session  of  the  Legislature.  Many 
of  the  great  newspapers  condemned  him  even  while 
admitting  the  need  to  expose  political  corruption.  His 
motives  were  impugned  and  his  act  characterized  as 
one  of  treachery.  There  is,  however,  little  doubt  that 
his  course  was  influenced  by  a  real  desire  to  serve  his 
state  and  nation.  For  a  good  many  years  he  lived 
quietly  in  the  little  city  of  Independence,  the  law  part- 
ner of  Lyman  U.  Humphrey,  afterward  governor  of 
the  state.  Tragedy  seemed  to  be  connected  with  the 
York  family.  A  brother  of  the  senator  was  one  of  the 
victims  of  the  noted  family  of  murderers,  the  Benders, 
about  whose  final  fate  there  has  always  clung  an  air  of 
uncertainty  and  mystery. 

If  there  was  any  need  at  this  time  for  argument  in 
favor  of  the  election  of  United  States  senators  by 
direct  vote  of  the  people  it  can  be  found  by  digging 
back  into  history  of  almost  any  of  the  old  time  elec- 
tions of  senators  by  the  Legislature.  Some  of  those 
elections  were  untainted  by  fraud  or  even  the  suspicion 
of  corruption,  but  many  of  them  were  smirched  by  deals 
which  placed  an  ineffaceable  stain  on  the  name  of  our 
state  and  at  that,  our  senatorial  elections  were  per- 
haps as  clean  as  those  of  the  average  state  in  the 
Union. 


HAPPENINGS  IN  THE  SEVENTIES       37 

When  Newton  Was  the  Wickedest  Town 

It  is  difficult  for  one  who  knows  only  the  Newton  of 
to-day  or  the  Newton  of  many  years  past,  to  believe 
that  there  ever  was  a  time  when  it  was  called  the 
"wickedest  town  in  Kansas,'*  which,  I  may  say  in  pass- 
ing, was  going  some,  for  Kansas  in  the  past  has  had 
some  towns  that  in  a  competitive  examination  for 
wickedness  would  have  given  hell  a  neck  and  neck  race. 
In  the  year  1871  the  Atchison,  Topeka  &  Santa  Fe 
road  was  extended  west  as  far  as  Newton  and,  for  that 
brief  summer,  it  became  the  terminus  of  the  Texas 
cattle  trail.  During  the  season  some  40,000  head  of 
cattle  were  driven  up  from  the  great  plains  of  Texas 
and  shipped  on  to  the  Kansas  City  and  Chicago  mar- 
kets from  the  then  frontier  town. 

For  that  season  the  pace  in  Newton  was  fast  and 
furious.  The  town  was  full  of  saloons  and  dance 
houses  and  possibly  never  had  a  more  reckless  and  des- 
perate element  gathered  in  any  town  than  filled  these 
places  of  iniquity  that  hot  and  hectic  season. 

A  vivid  description  of  the  Texas  cattle  herder  is 
found  in  the  Topeka  Commonwealth  of  August  15, 
1871.  It  is  worth  reproducing: 

"The  Texas  cattle  herder  is  a  character,  the  like  of  which 
can  be  found  nowhere  else  on  earth.  Of  course  he  is  un- 
learned and  illiterate,  with  but  few  wants  and  meager  am- 
bition. His  diet  is  principally  navy  plug  and  whisky  and 
the  occupation  dearest  to  his  heart  is  gambling.  His  dress 
consists  of  a  flannel  shirt  with  a  handkerchief  encircling  his 
neck,  butternut  pants  and  a  pair  of  long  boots,  in  which  are 
always  the  legs  of  his  pants.  His  head  is  covered  by  a  som- 
brero, which  is  a  Mexican  hat  with  a  low  crown  and  a  brim 
of  enormous  dimensions.  He  generally  wears  a  revolver 
on  each  side  of  his  person,  which  he  will  use  with  as  little 
hesitation  on  a  man  as  on  a  wild  animal.  Such  a  character 


38  WHEN  KANSAS  WAS  YOUNG 

is  dangerous  and  desperate  and  each  one  has  generally 
'killed  his  man.'  It  was  men  of  this  class  that  composed 
the  guerrilla  bands  like  Quantrell's.  There  are  good  and 
honorable  men  among  them,  but  the  runaway  boys  and  men 
who  find  it  too  hot  for  them  even  in  Texas,  join  the  cattle 
herders  and  constitute  a  large  portion  of  them.  They 
drink,  swear,  and  fight,  and  life  with  them  is  a  round  of 
boisterous  gayety  and  indulgence  in  sensual  pleasures." 

It  was  these  wild,  reckless  men  who  thronged  the 
dance  halls  of  Newton  in  that  summer  of  1871  and 
furnished  the  material  and  setting  for  this  story  of 
tragedy  and  murder.  Arthur  Delaney,  known  as  Mike 
McCluskie,  was  in  the  employ  of  the  railroad  com- 
pany— a  daring,  fearless  man,  quiet,  neither  appar- 
ently seeking  nor  avoiding  a  fight,  but  handy  with  a  gun 
and  deadly  in  his  aim.  A  few  days  before  the  fatal 
ninth  of  August,  1871,  McCluskie  had  had  an  alterca- 
tion with  a  desperate  gambler  and  gunman  from  Texas 
by  the  name  of  Baylor.  McCluskie  was  the  quicker  of 
the  two  on  the  draw  and  Baylor  died  with  his  boots 
on.  His  Texas  pals  vowed  revenge.  The  news  was 
carried  to  McCluskie  that  his  life  was  in  peril  and  that 
the  Texans,  led  by  Hugh  Anderson,  intended  to  mur- 
der him  if  he  went  to  the  Tuttle  dance  hall.  With  a 
reckless  disregard  of  danger,  McCluskie  walked  into 
the  dance  hall  and  engaged  in  conversation  with  one 
of  the  gang  that  had  determined  on  his  murder.  An- 
derson, the  leader,  drew  his  gun  and  with  an  oath  shot 
McCluskie  through  the  neck.  As  he  fell,  mortally 
wounded,  McCluskie  drew  his  own  gun  and,  half  rising 
from  tbe  floor,  pulled  the  trigger.  The  cartridge  failed 
to  explode,  but  the  dying  man,  with  two  more  bullets 
in  his  body,  pulled  the  trigger  again  with  all  his  dying 
strength,  and  this  time  wounded  but  did  not  kill  the 
Texan.  The  other  Texans  opened  fire  on  the  dying 
man.  Suddenly,  a  frail  youth,  in  the  last  stages  of 


HAPPENINGS  IN  THE  SEVENTIES       39 

consumption,  a  friend  of  McCluskie,  with  the  fighting 
name  of  Riley,  appeared  on  the  scene,  shut  the  door 
of  the  dance  hall,  as  the  story  goes,  to  prevent  egress, 
and  then  coolly  went  into  action.  His  gun  barked 
once,  twice,  thrice,  and  yet  again  and  again,  and  at 
each  crash  and  red  spurt  of  flame  a  Texan  went  down, 
until  six  men  had  fallen  dead  or  wounded.  By  some 
strange  freak  of  fate,  this  man  who,  apparently  think- 
ing that  death  was  very  near  in  any  event,  and  who 
seemed  weary  of  life  and  ready  to  throw  it  away  in 
revenging  his  dead  friend,  was  unharmed. 

It  was  the  greatest  killing  that  Newton  ever  had  and 
about  the  last.  The  better  element  of  the  new  town, 
shocked  by  the  tragedy,  determined  that  the  dance  halls 
must  go. 

The  next  spring  the  railroad  moved  south  to  the 
town  of  Wichita.  Newton  settled  down  to  an  orderly 
and  rather  humdrum  existence.  The  days  of  the  cattle 
trail,  the  Texas  herders,  the  dance  halls,  with  their 
wild  orgies,  the  bloody  battles,  the  men  weltering  in 
their  blood,  all  became  a  sort  of  ghastly  memory. 
Few,  perhaps  none,  of  the  men  and  women  who  lived 
in  Newton  in  those  wild  days,  are  still  alive,  but  the 
temporary  sojourner  in  the  town,  as  he  strolls  about 
between  trains,  may  have  pointed  out  to  him  the  place 
where  the  dance  hall  stood  and  where  the  midnight 
battle  was  waged  when  Newton  was  young  and  had 
the  unenviable  reputation  of  being  the  wickedest  town 
in  Kansas. 

An  International  Episode 

During  the  year  1871  or  '72  a  Scotchman  named 
George  Grant,  born  near  Aberdeen,  came  to  Kansas 
and  made  a  deal  with  the  Union  Pacific,  then  known 
as  the  Kansas  Pacific,  railroad  by  which  he  acquired 


40  WHEN  KANSAS  WAS  YOUNG 

title  to  a  large  amount  of  railroad  land  in  Ellis  County, 
variously  estimated  at  from  100,000  to  500,000  acres. 
Just  how  much  land  he  did  get  is  uncertain  but  it  was 
a  large  tract  and  bought  on  most  favorable  terms  so 
far  as  Grant  was  concerned,  who  was  evidently  pos- 
sessed of  a  good  deal  of  Scotch  thrift  and  canniness  in 
driving  a  bargain.  The  railroad  company  had  re- 
ceived a  vast  land  grant  from  the  Government  and  the 
managers  were  anxious  to  have  the  country  settled  as 
soon  as  possible  so  as  to  make  business  for  the  road. 
George  Grant  bought  the  land  at  the  rate  of  fifty  cents 
per  acre  and  did  not  even  have  to  pay  cash  down  at 
that.  His  agreement  was  to  bring  out  a  large  colony 
of  high  grade  Englishmen  with  money,  who  would 
settle  on  the  land  and  stock  it  with  blooded  cattle, 
horses,  and  sheep. 

The  bargain  having  been  closed,  the  enterprising 
advertising  agent  of  the  railroad  proclaimed  to  the 
world  that  a  vast  tract  of  land  had  been  sold  to  a 
British  nobleman,  Sir  George  Grant,  knighted  by  the 
queen,  a  man  of  almost  boundless  wealth,  who  had  de- 
cided to  establish  on  the  fertile  prairies  of  Kansas  an 
estate  like  those  of  the  landed  gentry  of  "Merry  Eng- 
land." 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  Scotchman  had  never  been 
dowered  with  a  title  in  the  old  world.  He  was  a  silk 
merchant  who  had  been  reasonably  prosperous  in  trade 
and  who  saw  a  speculation  in  the  Kansas  land.  The 
title,  however,  was  a  good  advertisement.  Kansas  had 
had  no  genuine  titled  noblemen  among  her  citizenship, 
and  while  the  early  Kansas  man  paid  little  deference  to 
titles,  he  rather  liked  to  say  that  an  English  lord  was 
so  enamored  that  he  left  his  ancestral  halls  to  settle 
out  in  western  Kansas.  The  title  also  helped  about 
getting  the  English  squires,  who  do  dote  on  titles, 
interested,  and  so  it  came  about  that  Sir  George  man- 


HAPPENINGS  IN  THE  SEVENTIES       41 

aged  to  create  quite  an  interest  among  these  British 
sires  who  were  looking  for  locations  for  their  sons. 
Also,  it  may  be  said  that  the  Scotchman  managed  to 
do  very  well  in  the  real  estate  business,  selling  the  land, 
for  which  he  had  promised  to  pay  the  railroad  com- 
pany fifty  cents  per  acre,  to  the  Englishmen  for  as 
high  as  $15  per  acre  in  some  cases.  He  also  built  him 
an  English  villa,  which  was,  in  turn,  press  agented, 
and  named  the  town  he  organized  Victoria,  in  honor 
of  the  British  queen. 

In  order  to  satisfy  the  religious  proclivities  of  the 
colonists,  he  built  a  church  which  was  duly  dedicated 
by  Bishop  Vail  of  blessed  memory.  He  also  brought 
considerable  blooded  stock  and  several  thousand  sheep 
to  graze  upon  the  succulent  grasses.  For  a  time  the 
plan  worked  with  remarkable  success.  At  one  time 
there  were  two  thousand  Britishers  in  Sir  George's 
colony,  according  to  estimates  of  the  truthful  re- 
porters. Maybe  there  were  not  so  many,  but  there 
was  a  respectable  number.  Most  of  them  were  a  fail- 
ure as  pioneers,  so  far  as  developing  the  country  was 
concerned,  but  they  had  a  really  delightful  time,  hunt- 
ing wolves  and  jack  rabbits,  riding  to  the  chase  dressed 
in  typical  English  fashion,  with  their  high  topped 
boots  and  ridiculous  little  caps,  and  at  evening  gather- 
ing in  the  saloon  run  by  one  Tommy  Drum,  where  they 
"stayed  themselves  with  flagons,"  imbibed  large  quan- 
tities of  "Scotch  and  soda"  and  with  large  volume  of 
sound  if  not  with  melody,  sang  English  songs.  One 
of  the  favorites  of  these  was  a  poetical  description  of 
a  shipwreck,  each  stanza  ending  with  the  sad  refrain 
"The  ship  went  down  with  the  fair  young  bride  a 
thousand  miles  from  shore." 

It  was  while  in  a  lachrymose  state  of  mind,  the  result 
of  frequent  irrigation,  that  one  of  the  young  English 
"remittance"  men  became  so  wrought  up  over  the 


42  WHEN  KANSAS  WAS  YOUNG 

tragedy  which  happened  to  the  "fair  young  bride"  that 
he  hurled  a  bottle  through  the  large  pier  glass,  which 
was  Tommy  Drum's  delight  and  pride  and  which,  when 
Fort  Hays  was  an  important  military  post,  had  often 
reflected  the  images  of  Generals  Sherman,  Sheridan, 
Custer  and  Phil  Kearney,  as  they  lined  up  in  front  of 
the  bar  and  took  their  "regulars"  of  whisky  straight, 
or  perhaps  with  a  dash  of  lemon  to  modify  the  rough- 
ness of  the  drink.  The  breaking  of  the  glass  caused 
Drum  to  run  about  in  circles  shouting  "By  the  bolt !" 
"By  the  bolt !"  which  was  his  nearest  approach  to  pro- 
fanity. Nobody  knew  just  what  the  expression  meant, 
but  it  served  to  relieve  Tommy's  surcharged  feelings 
when  ordinary  language  did  not  fill  the  bill  and  for  that 
matter  it  was  more  harmless  and  fully  as  sensible  as 
any  form  of  profanity. 

It  was  at  the  thirst  parlor  of  Tommy  Drum,  where 
occurred  the  international  episode  about  which  this 
story  is  written. 

It  was  the  evening  of  the  Glorious  Fourth  of  July 
and  a  number  of  the  British  scions  and  Americans 
had  gathered  and  indulged  in  numerous  potations,  until 
they  had  reached  the  state  where  they  were  ready  for 
argument,  tears,  or  battle,  when  one  of  the  Americans 
happened  to  remember  that  it  was  the  natal  day  of 
our  republic.  Filled  with  highballs  and  patriotism,  he 
proposed  that  they  should  sing  "The  Star-Spangled 
Banner." 

The  subjects  of  the  queen  objected.  They  didn't 
deem  it  fitting  for  Englishmen  to  sing  the  national  air 
of  this  "blarsted  republic."  The  only  national  song 
they  would  sing,  they  declared,  was  "God  Save  the 
Queen."  For  a  time  the  Americans  argued  the  matter 
in  a  bibulous  sort  of  way,  but  the  argument  soon  be- 
came heated.  It  was  considered  an  international  ques- 
tion and  as  the  Britishers  continued  obdurate  the 


HAPPENINGS  IN  THE  SEVENTIES       43 

Americans  felt  that  it  was  up  to  them  to  uphold  the 
honor  of  their  country. 

So  the  ruction  commenced  and  waxed  fast  and  furi- 
ous. The  Britishers  put  up  a  game  fight  and  left  their 
marks  on  the  countenances  of  their  foes,  but  they  were 
outnumbered.  Now  and  then  a  well-directed  blow  from 
an  American  fist  or  chair  or  heavy  bottle  wielded  with 
vigor  put  a  subject  of  the  queen  out  of  the  fight  and 
then  the  battle  became  more  one  sided  than  before.  A 
good  deal  of  the  saloon  furniture  was  broken  up  and 
nearly  every  countenance,  both  British  and  American, 
bore  marks  of  the  conflict  before  it  was  ended  by  the 
American  forces  throwing  the  last  of  the  Englishmen 
into  the  cellar. 

The  victors  were  standing  guard  over  the  stairway 
leading  down  to  the  basement  when  the  late  Judge  Jim 
Reeder  appeared  upon  the  scene  and  asked  what  all 
the  row  was  about. 

The  leader  of  the  Americans,  who  was  carrying  a 
beautiful  black  eye  and  a  somewhat  damaged  nose  as 
souvenirs  of  the  conflict,  stated  the  case.  "Thesh 
here  Britishers,"  he  said  thickly,  "  'fuse  to  shing  'Star- 
Spangled  Banner,'  an'  thish  is  the  glorish  Fourth  July 
— insis'  on  shingin'  that  dam  British  song  'God  Shave 
th'  Queen' — wouldn't  stan*  for  it.  Been  a  hell  of  a 
fight,  but  can't  no  Britisher  inshult  Star-Spangled 
Banner.' " 

Judge  Reeder  asked  for  a  chance  to  talk  with  the 
imprisoned  Englishmen,  but  found  them  standing 
firmly,  though  battered,  by  their  national  anthem. 

"Gentlemen,"  he  said,  "there  should  be  peace  between 
the  mother  country  and  ours.  I  have  a  proposition  to 
make.  Let  the  Americans  sing  the  'Star-Spangled  Ban- 
ner' and  the  Englishmen  join  in.  After  that  we  will 
permit  the  Englishmen  to  sing  'God  Save  the  Queen.* 
Giving  you  loyal  Americans  the  right  to  sing  first  is 


44  WHEN  KANSAS  WAS  YOUNG 

an  acknowledgment  on  their  part  that  our  glorious 
republic  takes  the  precedence  and  then  as  a  matter  of 
courtesy  they  can  be  permitted  to  sing  their  national 
air." 

At  first  the  Americans  were  not  disposed  to  yield. 
They  insisted  that  they  had  whipped  the  blamed  British 
and,  as  the  leader  of  the  Americans  expressed  it,  "To 
the  vic'or  b'longs  th'  spoils."  On  the  other  hand,  the 
British  though  temporarily  overpowered  were  still 
game  and  unwilling  to  yield  anything  to  their  foes. 

After  much  argument  Judge  Reeder  induced  both 
sides  to  agree  to  his  suggestion.  The  badly  battered 
Englishmen  were  permitted  to  come  up  out  of  the 
cellar.  A  drink  was  taken  by  all  and  the  Americans 
were  told  to  go  on  with  their  singing. 

The  leader  started  out  bravely  in  a  somewhat  ragged 
voice :  "O  shay  c'n  you  shee,  by  zhee  dawn's  er'y  light." 
Here  his  recollection  failed  him  and  a  comrade  whose 
lip  had  been  cut  open  during  the  festivities  suggested 
disgustedly  that  "any  fool  ought  to  know  better'n  to 
shing  'Star-Spangled  Banner'  to  the  tune  of  'John 
Brown's  Body  Lies  a  Mouldering  in  zhe  Grave.' ' 

"Maybe,"  said  the  leader  with  bibulous  gravity  and 
indignation,  "if  you  know  so  much  'bout  shingin'  you 
c'n  shing  this  yourself." 

The  other  American  tried  it  but  fell  down  on  the 
second  line.  A  number  of  others  tried  it  but  all  failed 
either  because  they  didn't  know  the  words  or  the  tune 
and  most  of  them  knew  neither  one. 

They  finally  all  gave  it  up  and  Judge  Reeder  said: 
"Well,  gentlemen,  you  have  had  a  fair  chance  to  uphold 
the  honor  of  our  country  in  song  and  failed.  It  is  no 
more  than  fair  that  the  Englishmen  have  their  chance. 
Proceed,  gentlemen,  to  sing  your  national  air,  'God 
Save  the  Queen.'  " 

The  leader  of  the  defeated  party  smiled  as  well  as 


HAPPENINGS  IN  THE  SEVENTIES       45 

his  battered  lips  would  permit  and  started  in  on  the 
British  anthem.  He  started,  that  was  all.  At  the  end 
of  the  first  line  his  memory  completely  failed  him  and 
besides  he  was  off  the  tune.  Other  loyal  subjects  of 
the  Queen  had  no  better  success  and  finally  gave  it  up. 

Satisfied  at  last,  the  late  antagonists  then  lined  up 
at  the  bar,  imbibed  a  drink  by  way  of  reconciliation, 
chipped  in  to  pay  for  the  furniture  destroyed,  and 
parted  with  mutual  assurances  that  they  had  spent  a 
most  enjoyable  evening. 

Sir  George  Grant  died  in  1878,  at  the  premature  age 
of  fifty-six,  and  was  buried  close  by  the  church  he  had 
built.  Hot  winds  and  crop  failures  discouraged  the 
colonists  and  they  faded  away.  Their  places  were 
taken  by  a  colony  of  subjects  of  the  late  Czar  of 
Russia  who  have  lived  and  prospered  and  grown  rich 
where  the  followers  of  Sir  George  failed.  Near  the 
little  church  by  which  lies  the  body  of  Sir  George 
Grant,  has  been  erected  one  of  the  largest  and  most 
magnificent  churches  west  of  the  Missouri  River,  paid 
for  out  of  the  earnings  of  these  erstwhile  Russian  peas- 
ants who  came  to  this  country,  poor  in  purse,  but  en- 
dowed with  the  industry,  patience,  and  endurance  nec- 
essary to  make  successful  pioneers. 


The  Looting  of  Harper  County 

In  the  spring  of  1873  a  trio  of  scoundrels  met  in 
Baxter  Springs  for  the  purpose  of  organizing  a  con- 
spiracy to  plunder,  that  would  be  free  from  the  ordi- 
nary risks  incurred  by  the  common  thief,  highwayman, 
or  burglar  and  at  the  same  time  yield  a  greater  finan- 
cial reward.  The  conspirators  were  a  couple  of  shyster 
lawyers  of  small  practice  and  shady  reputation,  named 
W.  H.  Horner  and  A.  W.  Rucker  and  a  thug  and  des- 


46  WHEN  KANSAS  WAS  YOUNG 

perado  by  the  name  of  William  Boyd,  who  had  been 
elected  to  the  office  of  mayor  by  the  lawless  element 
that  at  that  particular  time  was  in  control  of  the 
town.  Boyd  was  a  coarse,  brutal  murderer  and  gam- 
bler, who  had  killed  the  city  marshal  in  cold  blood  a 
short  time  before,  but  had  managed  to  get  clear  on 
the  plea  of  self-defense.  He  was  known  as  a  crooked 
gambler  and  lived  in  open  adultery  with  a  negro  mis- 
tress, but  seems  to  have  held  the  leadership  and  back- 
ing of  the  tough  element,  while  the  reputable  citizens 
of  the  town  were  terrorized,  held  either  by  fear  of  per- 
sonal violence  if  they  opposed  Boyd,  or  by  the  dread 
that  they  would  be  ruined  in  a  business  way  if  they 
did  not  cater  to  the  lawless  element.  It  was,  no  doubt, 
the  crooked  brain  of  Horner  that  planned  the  iniquity 
the  three  were  to  put  on  foot,  but  Boyd  probably  fur- 
nished the  funds  necessary  to  carry  it  out. 

The  plan  was  the  fraudulent  organization  of  Harper 
County.  Horner  was  not  particular  about  the  loca- 
tion of  the  robbery,  but  Harper  happened  to  furnish 
the  most  convenient  territory.  He  assured  the  other 
conspirators  that  the  plan  was  not  only  feasible  but 
entirely  safe  and  certain.  All  they  had  to  do  was  to 
get  up  a  petition  alleging  that  there  were  at  least  600 
bona  fide  inhabitants  in  the  county  to  be  organized, 
have  a  census  taken  showing  the  names  of  such  inhab- 
itants, and  present  the  same  to  the  governor.  Every 
thing  would  be  regular  on  its  face.  The  governor 
would  issue  his  proclamation  setting  forth  that  a  peti- 
tion and  census  duly  verified  according  to  law  had 
been  presented  and  certain  persons  had  been  duly 
selected  for  county  officers. 

It  was  easy  to  gather  up  a  gang  of  loafers  from  the 
Baxter  Springs  saloons  and  the  party  made  up  of  con- 
spirators and  bums  traveled  westward.  One  of  the 
loafers  who  was  induced  to  join  the  party  and  repre- 


HAPPENINGS  IN  THE  SEVENTIES       47 

sent  the  "bona  fide"  inhabitants,  afterward  told  the 
story.  He  said  that  after  they  had  traveled  westward 
for  several  days  Horner  announced  that  they  had 
reached  Harper  County.  "And  now,"  said  Horner, 
"we  will  proceed  to  organize  this  county."  The  papers 
were  already  drawn  up.  The  petition  with  600  signa- 
tures, copied  from  Baxter  Springs  hotel  registers,  was 
ready  to  forward  to  the  governor.  Everything  pro- 
ceeded as  merrily  as  a  marriage  feast,  or  perhaps  a 
better  simile  would  be  the  feasts  of  buzzards  gathered 
about  the  carrion.  The  looters  held  an  election  in 
which  not  only  Horner,  Rucker  and  Boyd  were  duly 
elected  to  office  but  each  of  the  loafers  was  given  of- 
ficial honors.  Horner  was  selected  as  representative 
of  the  county  and  in  the  regular  session  of  1874,  al- 
though living  at  Baxter  Springs,  he  brazenly  appeared 
as  representative  from  Harper  County,  was  duly  sworn 
in  and  served  through  the  session. 

The  organization  worked  out  as  Horner  had  pre- 
dicted. The  petition  with  its  forged  signatures  was 
presented  to  the  governor,  the  proclamation  was  duly 
issued,  and  on  August  20,  1873,  Harper  County  was 
declared  duly  organized.  Then  the  real  purpose  of 
the  conspirators  was  put  into  execution  and  reaping 
of  the  harvest  of  loot  began.  Twenty-five  thousand 
dollars  in  bonds  were  voted  to  build  a  court  house  and 
$15,000  funding  bonds  were  issued.  I  believe  the  Leg- 
islature legalized  the  issue  and  then  Horner  gaily  pro- 
ceeded to  unload  the  bonds  on  the  "innocent  pur- 
chaser." It  is  said  that  the  $40,000  in  bonds  were 
sold  for  $30,000,  and  with  his  loot  in  his  possession 
Horner  went  back  to  Baxter  Springs  to  settle  with  his 
fellow  conspirators.  He  undertook  to  give  them  the 
double  cross,  but  Boyd  had  set  detectives  on  his  track 
when  he  went  to  St.  Louis  to  sell  the  bonds,  and  knew 
the  price  for  which  they  had  been  sold. 


48  WHEN  KANSAS  WAS  YOUNG 

The  story  is  that  Horner  took  out  of  his  pockets 
$15,000  cash,  divided  it  into  three  parts  and  declared 
that  he  had  been  obliged  to  dispose  of  the  bonds  at  a 
heavy  discount  and  had  as  a  matter  of  fact  only  re- 
ceived $15,000.  At  this  point  Boyd  drew  his  gun, 
thrust  it  in  the  face  of  Horner,  and  after  loading  him 
with  all  the  opprobrious  and  vile  epithets  he  had  in 
stock,  told  him  that  unless  he  came  across  with  the 
other  $15,000  he  would  kill  him.  Horner  had  every 
reason  to  believe  that  Boyd  would  not  hesitate  to  do 
what  he  said  and  rapidly  dug  up  the  other  $15,000 
saying  that  his  talk  about  $15,000  was  just  a  joke. 
Boyd  soon  after  left  the  town,  but  Horner  and  Rucker 
did  not  even  have  the  grace  to  go  away  where  their 
villainy  would  not  be  known.  Rucker  blossomed  out 
as  a  loan  shark,  loaning  money  at  from  three  to  ten 
per  cent  per  month.  Horner's  seat  in  the  Legislature 
was  declared  vacant  and  the  organization  of  Harper 
County  a  fraud,  after  all  the  damage  had  been  done, 
but  none  of  the  thieves  were  punished  for  their  crimes. 
The  bar-room  loafers  who  had  been  used  by  the  con- 
spirators complained  considerably  when  they  learned 
that  Horner,  Boyd,  and  Rucker  had  pulled  down  $10,- 
000  apiece,  but  that  availed  them  nothing. 

The  astonishing  thing  to  me,  after  all,  is  that  the 
thieves  were  satisfied  with  stealing  $40,000.  When 
they  contemplated  what  was  done  in  the  adjoining 
county  of  Barber,  they  probably  concluded  that  they 
were  pikers.  It  would  have  been  as  easy  to  steal  $100,- 
000  as  $40,000.  Also,  it  is  difficult  to  understand  how 
the  courts  in  these  fraudulent  bond  cases  could  hold 
that  the  buyers  were  innocent  purchasers.  The  very 
fact  that  the  St.  Louis  parties  who  purchased  these 
bonds  paid  only  $30,000  for  them  was  prima  facie 
evidence  that  they  knew  the  bonds  were  fraudulent. 
It  is  also  very  difficult  to  believe  that  the  governor  did 


HAPPENINGS  IN  THE  SEVENTIES       49 

not  know  when  he  consented  to  the  organization  that 
the  whole  thing  was  a  gross  fraud,  a  monstrous 
iniquity. 

The  Legislature  of  1874 

The  Legislature  of  1874  met  while  the  country  was 
still  in  the  grip  of  the  panic  of  1873.  Hard  times,  as 
usual,  had  their  political  reaction  and  Kansas  was 
being  washed  by  the  waves  of  reform.  While  the  ma- 
jority of  the  Legislature  was  nominally  Republican, 
the  reformers  held  the  balance  of  power  at  least  in  the 
lower  house  and  the  men  who  talked  loudest  against 
the  "money  power"  and  harangued  the  longest  against 
the  burdens  of  taxation,  gathered  the  biggest  audiences 
and  received  the  most  applause.  There  was  even  threat 
of  a  new  party,  but  the  Republicans  managed  to  keep 
control  and  elect  the  officers. 

There  was  trouble,  too,  in  the  state  house.  The 
state  treasurer,  Hayes,  was  accused  of  misappropria- 
tion of  public  funds  and  was  impeached  and  forced  to 
resign.  Hayes  was  an  old  man,  probably  incompetent 
to  perform  the  duties  of  state  treasurer,  but  was  not 
a  scoundrel.  All  this,  however,  added  to  the  general 
dissatisfaction  on  account  of  hard  times  and  in  that 
sort  of  an  atmosphere  the  Legislature  convened.  Cap- 
tain McEachron,  of  Cloud  County,  was  elected  speaker 
and  Captain  Alex  R.  Banks,  chief  clerk  of  the  house. 

As  a  measure  of  economy  the  reform  members  op- 
posed the  election  of  a  chaplain,  saying  that  the  cost 
of  each  prayer  amounted  to  the  price  of  fifteen  bushels 
of  corn.  It  was  proposed  to  save  that  amount  by 
inviting  local  ministers  to  pray  for  nothing,  or  to  have 
such  members  of  the  house  as  had  at  divers  and  sundry 
times  undertaken  to  preach,  do  the  praying  for  the 
house.  As  the  local  ministers  did  not  show  any  enthu- 


50  WHEN  KANSAS  WAS  YOUNG 

siasm  about  donating  their  services  to  intercede  with 
the  Lord  on  behalf  of  the  Legislature  at  nothing  per, 
it  was  proposed  by  some  members  that  the  chief  clerk 
be  required  to  read  the  Lord's  Prayer,  at  the  opening 
of  each  day's  session.  This  proposal,  however,  was 
promptly  voted  down  and  the  house  was  left  without 
any  one  to  offer  up  a  short  and  snappy  petition  to  the 
Throne  of  Grace. 

Captain  Henry  King  was  at  the  time  editor  of  the 
Commonwealth,  and  I  might  say  in  passing,  that  few 
if  any  of  the  great  dailies  of  the  country  had  abler 
editors.  He  made  the  incident  of  the  chaplaincy  the 
subject  of  an  editorial  which  I  think  deserves  a  place 
among  the  literary  and  humorous  gems  of  Kansas 
writers. 

"The  Kansas  House  of  Representatives/'  said  the  edi- 
torial, "is  without  a  chaplain  and  is  naturally  in  a  very  bad 
way  about  it.  We  have  never  tried  being  a  representative, 
but  if  we  did  we  should  feel  the  need  of  a  chaplain  to 
pray  for  us. 

"Reform,  which  seems  to  emulate  the  gaunt,  bone-picking 
parsimony  of  the  ridiculous  silhouette,  has  now  done  its 
worst  by  depriving  the  scrimped  and  perquisiteless  legis- 
lators of  their  necessary  rations  of  grace. 

"They  can  do  without  postage  stamps;  they  might  eke 
out  a  hardtack  and  herring  existence  by  giving  up  their 
passes  and  cutting  off  their  mileage,  but  it  is  the  refinement 
of  cruelty  to  stop  their  prayers.  When  the  Legislature 
assembled  and  organized  the  first  and  most  important  duty 
of  the  House  (the  Senate  being  provided  with  one)  was  to 
select  a  chaplain.  It  has  been  customary  to  avoid  the 
appearance  of  sectarian  partiality  by  inviting  the  clergy 
of  the  city  to  alternate  in  making  a  prayer,  for  which  the 
state  paid  the  very  moderate  figure  of  $3  per  invocation. 
Some  reformer  moved  that  the  House  do  without  prayers 
this  year  of  reform,  unless  they  could  be  made  gratuitously, 
for  each  prayer  cost  about  fifteen  bushels  of  corn. 


HAPPENINGS  IN  THE  SEVENTIES        51 

"Now  a  man,  we  hold,  can  pray  for  himself  gratuitously 
and  in  that  prayer  he  can  include  the  whole  world  if  he 
wants  to,  but  it  is  something  different  to  pray  against  the 
current,  so  to  speak,  in  behalf  of  the  Legislature.  Mr. 
Silas  Wegg  very  properly  charged  Mr.  Boffin  extra  for 
'dropping  into  poetry/  owing  to  the  wear  and  tear  on  his 
finer  feelings  thus  induced.  On  the  same  principle  a  clergy- 
man should  be  paid  for  the  lacerations  of  his  faith,  conse- 
quent on  praying  for  a  Legislature.  It  is  not,  therefore, 
to  be  wondered  at  that  no  clergyman  felt  it  incumbent  on 
himself  to  pray  for  the  Legislature.  The  device  of  calling 
on  such  members  of  the  Legislature  as  had  formerly  done 
clergical  work  proved  a  failure,  as  it  deserved.  To  ask  a 
man  to  aid  in  making  the  laws  and  pray  for  divine  aid  in 
their  fabrication  was  as  if  a  blacksmith  should  be  asked  to 
forge  a  bar  of  iron  and  blow  the  bellows  at  the  same  time. 
The  dual  function  of  the  legislator  and  the  parson  can  not, 
as  there  are  many  precedents  to  prove,  subsist  in  a  single 
individual  simultaneously. 

"The  last  resort  of  these  poor  statute  makers,  left 
prayerless,  was  to  call  on  the  clerk  to  read  every  morning 
from  his  desk  the  Lord's  Prayer.  This  was  a  very  thin 
illusion  of  sanctity  to  be  sure,  but  like  Mercutio's  wound 
it  might  serve.  We  need  not,  we  hope,  assure  the  members 
of  the  House  who  promptly,  and  we  think  unadvisedly, 
voted  down  the  proposition,  that  there  are  very  many  ex- 
cellent things  in  the  Lord's  Prayer,  and  it  is  free  from  the 
unpleasant  personalities  that  sometimes  slip  into  impromptu 
invocations.  It  asks  for  the  coming  of  the  heavenly  king- 
dom on  earth  and  prostrates  the  devout  utterer  before  the 
will  of  a  merciful  Providence.  It  asks  for  all  a  portion 
of  the  daily  bread  that  sustains  nature  and  the  bread  of 
life  which  strengthens  and  stimulates  the  spirit.  It  asks 
that  our  debts  be  forgiven  as  we  forgive  our  debtors  and 
contains  the  essence  of  all  prayers,  the  continual  cry  of 
the  truly  devout  and  penitent  spirit  in  the  words  that 
should  dwell  ever  upon  the  lips  of  every  man,  whether 
lawmaker  or  law  observer:  'Lead  us  not  into  temptation 
but  deliver  us  from  evil.' 

"Now,  why  should  not  the  chief  clerk  repeat  this  prayer 


52  WHEN  KANSAS  WAS  YOUNG 

in  default  of  some  one  to  offer  up  a  scientific  $3  devotional 
exercise?  If  the  general  worldliness  appearance  of  that 
young  gentleman  were  sacrificed,  with  his  secular  and  se- 
ductive mutton-chop  whiskers,  and  his  presence  brought  up 
to  the  proper  clerical  standard  by  the  addition  of  a  white 
choker  and  shad  belly  coat,  his  resonant,  clerical  voice 
modulated  to  the  devotional  monotone,  we  cannot  see  why 
the  most  graceless  legislator  might  not  exclaim  with 
Hamlet,  'Sweet  Banks,  in  thy  orisons  be  all  my  sins  re- 
membered.' 

"But  the  lower  house  is  without  a  chaplain  or  even  the 
shadows  of  the  substance,  which  we  have  shown  might  be 
produced  by  getting  the  chief  clerk  up  in  clerical  mas- 
querade. It  is  not  only  a  cruel  deprivation  to  the  members, 
but  will,  we  are  afraid,  have  its  influence  upon  the  laws." 


This  same  Legislature  seriously  considered  a  bill  to 
reduce  the  salary  of  the  governor  from  $3,000,  as  it 
was  at  that  time,  to  $2,000;  also  to  reduce  the  salary 
of  the  secretary  of  state  to  $1,800,  the  salary  of  the 
state  auditor  to  $1,500;  the  salary  of  the  attorney 
general  to  $1,200;  the  salary  of  the  state  superintend- 
ent to  $1,500;  the  salary  of  the  judges  of  the  district 
courts  to  $2,000,  and  the  salary  of  the  warden  of  the 
penitentiary  to  $1,500. 

The  Commonwealth  vigorously  opposed  this  bill  and 
no  doubt  did  much  to  kill  it.  Instead  of  reducing  the 
salaries  as  indicated,  the  Commonwealth  declared  that 
the  governor  should  receive  a  salary  of  $5,000;  that 
the  secretary  of  state  and  state  auditor  should  receive 
$3,000  each ;  the  attorney  general  $4,000  and  the  state 
treasurer  $10,000  per  annum.  At  the  close  of  the 
session  the  editor  of  the  Commonwealth  roasted  the 
Legislature  to  a  deep  rich  brown,  declaring  that  it  had 
accomplished  nothing  worth  while,  that  the  men  who 
had  yelled  loudest  for  economy  and  reform  had  really 
done  nothing,  and  had  not  seriously  tried  to  do  any- 


HAPPENINGS  IN  THE  SEVENTIES       53 

thing,  but  had  been  "grandstanding"  to  gain  popular 
favor  and  applause.  But  if  the  Legislature  was  a 
calamity,  it  was  the  forerunner  of  worse  to  come. 
Within  three  or  four  months  after  the  adjournment 
clouds  of  locusts  that  darkened  the  sun  came  flying 
from  the  west  and  devoured  every  green  thing  from 
the  sage  brush  lands  of  Colorado  to  the  turgid  flood 
of  the  Missouri.  And  Kansas,  taking  a  melancholy 
pride  in  adversity,  advertised  herself  to  the  world  as 
the  native  habitation  of  the  grasshopper  and,  even 
when  prosperity  had  returned  to  her  borders  and  her 
bins  were  bursting  with  the  fruit  of  her  golden  har- 
vests, painted  the  hopper  rampant  upon  her  banners. 


The  Fight  at  Adobe  Watts 

Among  the  treasured  collections  of  Dodge  City  there 
used  to  be  a  magnificent  war  bonnet  with  its  trailing 
plume  of  eagle  feathers  and  other  accouterments  of  an 
Indian  chief.  Why  the  Historical  Society  has  not 
secured  these  historic  relics  I  do  not  know,  nor  do  I 
know  where  they  are  at  this  time.  They  were  memen- 
toes of  one  of  the  most  thrilling  and  desperate  fights 
that  marked  the  losing  struggle  of  the  red  men  to  hold 
their  hunting  grounds  against  the  aggressive  and  ruth- 
less incroachment  of  the  Anglo-Saxon.  In  the  Pan- 
handle of  Texas,  175  miles  southwest  of  Dodge  City, 
there  had  been  built,  while  that  was  still  a  part  of 
Mexico's  domain,  a  rude  fort  of  sun-dried  brick,  called 
adobe.  Just  who  built  the  fort  is  not  definitely  re- 
corded, but  in  any  event  after  Texas  attained  her  in- 
dependence and  perhaps  before  that  time,  the  old  fort 
was  permitted  to  fall  into  a  state  of  decay,  and  it 
only  figures  in  this  story  because  it  marked  the  loca- 
tion of  the  historic  battle  in  which  a  little  band  of 


54  WHEN  KANSAS  WAS  YOUNG 

Kansas  buffalo  hunters  fought  through  a  long  hot  June 
day  against  an  overwhelming  force  of  the  bravest 
warriors  of  the  plains. 

The  year  1874  was  the  year  of  the  greatest  slaugh- 
ter of  the  buffalo.  To  speak  of  the  killing  of  buf- 
falo as  a  hunt,  was  a  misnomer.  It  was  simply  a  wan- 
ton destruction  of  these  poor  beasts  which  covered  the 
prairies  with  their  countless  multitudes.  The  Pan- 
handle of  Texas  was  that  year  the  favorite  hunting  or 
killing  ground  and  a  company  of  Kansas  hunters  num- 
bering, according  to  the  various  accounts  still  extant, 
from  fourteen  to  twenty-eight,  had  gone  down  there 
that  spring  of  1874  to  have  a  part  in  the  slaughter. 
The  wild  Indians  of  the  Comanche,  Kiowa,  and  Apache 
tribes  resented  this  invasion  of  their  favorite  hunting 
grounds  and  with  considerable  reason,  for  they  knew 
that  at  the  rate  the  white  men  were  slaughtering  the 
buffalo  the  vast  herds  would  soon  be  extinct.  The 
Indian  never  killed  buffalo  for  the  mere  sport  of  kill- 
ing; that  was  characteristic  of  the  white  and  sup- 
posedly civilized  and  Christianized  white  man.  The 
Indian  killed  to  supply  his  needs  for  food  and  furs  as 
he  had  done  for  generations,  but  there  had  been  no 
diminution  of  the  great  herds  and  would  not  have  been 
until  yet  if  the  white  hunters  had  not  come.  In  all 
the  history  of  the  world  there  has  never  been  a  more 
cruel,  wasteful,  and  needless  slaughter  of  animals  than 
that  which  in  the  short  space  of  three  years  practically 
exterminated  the  buffalo. 

So  it  is  not  remarkable  that  when  the  white  hunters 
came  down  to  the  Panhandle  country  and  established  a 
trading  post  and  began  the  wholesale  slaughter,  the 
Indian  warriors  were  filled  with  anger  and  a  desire  for 
vengeance.  Among  the  Comanches  was  a  medicine  man 
who  had  acquired  great  influence  over  the  men  of  the 
tribe.  His  power  was  not  confined,  it  seemed,  to  his 


HAPPENINGS  IN  THE  SEVENTIES       55 

own  tribe.  He  was  regarded  as  a  mighty  medicine  man 
by  the  Kiowas,  Arapahoes,  and  Apaches.  He  made 
these  warriors  believe  that  by  the  use  of  a  certain  kind 
of  war  paint  and  by  his  occult  powers  he  could  render 
them  invisible  to  the  eyes  of  the  white  men  and  immune 
to  the  bullets  from  their  guns.  It  would,  therefore, 
be  an  easy  task  to  surprise  this  band  of  hunters  and 
kill  them  without  the  loss  of  any  Indians.  When  the 
attack  was  made  and  the  Indians  were  mowed  down 
by  the  deadly  fire  of  the  white  hunters,  protected  by 
the  thick  walls  of  their  adobe  houses,  the  minds  of  the 
Indians  must  have  been  disabused  of  the  belief  in  the 
powers  of  Minimic,  the  medicine  man,  but  still  they 
fought  with  a  reckless  daring  which  excited  the  admira- 
tion of  their  foes. 

It  is  hard  for  a  Kansas  man  to  acknowledge  that 
whisky  and  a  saloon  ever  served  a  good  purpose,  but 
it  must  be  said  that  if  it  had  not  been  for  the  thirst 
of  the  hunters  which  kept  them  in  the  saloon  which  had 
been  organized  for  temporary  purposes  by  one  Jack 
Hanahan,  and  the  giving  way  of  one  of  the  supports 
which  held  up  the  roof  of  the  frontier  thirst  parlor, 
the  Indian  surprise  would  in  all  probability  have  been 
complete;  the  hunters,  post  trader,  and  drink  dis- 
penser would  all  have  been  massacred  and  the  reputa- 
tion of  Minimic,  the  medicine  man,  would  have  been 
sustained.  The  night  was  far  spent  and  the  final  round 
of  drinks  in  Hanahan's  saloon  was  about  to  be  called 
for,  when  it  was  discovered  that  the  center  post  sup- 
porting the  dirt-covered  roof  was  giving  way  and  all 
hands  set  in  to  prevent  the  impending  catastrophe. 
It  was  considerable  of  a  job  and  by  the  time  a  new 
support  had  been  placed  and  a  couple  of  men  sent  up 
on  the  roof  to  shovel  off  some  of  the  dirt  and  relieve 
the  pressure  on  the  support,  the  early  dawn  was  gild- 
ing the  far  reaches  of  the  prairie. 


56  WHEN  KANSAS  WAS  YOUNG 

The  Indians  were  slipping  up  through  the  tall  grass 
in  the  dawn  to  the  attack,  when  in  the  early  light  they 
were  discovered  by  the  men  on  the  roof.  The  alarm 
was  given  and  the  Indians,  seeing  that  they  had  been 
discovered,  rushed  with  a  blood-curdling  yell  to  the 
onslaught.  Careless  or  indifferent  to  danger,  some  of 
the  hunters  were  sleeping  out  in  the  open  and  three 
of  them  were  killed  before  they  could  get  into  the 
shelter  of  the  thick-walled  houses.  Those  who  did  get 
inside,  however,  were  reasonably  well  protected,  the 
walls  were  arrow  and  bullet  proof  and  they  had  been 
provided  with  loopholes,  through  which  the  men  could 
shoot  with  comparative  safety.  At  the  head  of  the 
oncoming  warriors  rode  the  half-breed  Comanche  chief 
Quanna,  and  with  him  rode  the  proud  and  gallant  sub- 
chief,  the  younger  Stone  Calf,  nephew  of  the  old  chief 
Stone  Calf.  On  his  head  he  wore  his  great  war  bonnet, 
with  its  plume  of  eagle  feathers  reaching  almost  to 
his  ankles.  His  body  fantastically  painted,  his  wrists 
and  ankles  ornamented  with  circlets  of  silver  or  copper, 
he  was  as  proud  and  valiant  a  warrior  as  ever  rode 
to  battle,  a  born  leader  of  savage  men. 

Among  the  hunters  in  the  adobe  house  were  some  of 
the  best  marksmen  of  the  plains.  They  barred  the 
door  with  sacks  of  flour  from  the  post  store,  and  this 
precaution  saved  their  lives.  The  Indians  rode  up 
recklessly  and,  whirling  their  horses,  backed  them  vio- 
lently against  the  door.  If  it  had  not  been  for  the 
flour  barricade,  the  weight  of  the  horses  would  have 
broken  down  the  door.  Inside  were  the  hunters  with 
their  huge  buffalo  guns.  They  held  their  fire  until  the 
onrushing  savages  were  within  thirty  yards,  and  then 
through  the  loopholes  poured  a  murderous  volley, 
which  piled  the  ground  with  Indian  dead.  The  In- 
dians retreated  before  the  hail  of  death,  but  came  on 
again  and  again.  The  medicine  man,  Minimic,  rode 


HAPPENINGS  IN  THE  SEVENTIES        57 

about  among  the  braves  on  a  pony  which  he  had  be- 
daubed with  paint  to  make  it  immune  to  the  hunters' 
bullets,  and  exposed  himself  recklessly  until  his  pony 
was  shot  down  under  him.  The  young  chief,  with  mag- 
nificent daring,  rode  alone  through  the  deadly  zone  of 
fire  right  up  to  one  of  the  port  holes,  through  which 
he  thrust  a  revolver  and  emptied  it  into  the  room 
where  the  hunters  were.  A  bullet  laid  him  low,  des- 
perately, perhaps  mortally,  wounded,  but  still  uncon- 
quered  he  put  his  pistol  to  his  head  and  blew  out  his 
brains. 

All  day  long  the  battle  raged  and  even  then  the 
Indians  did  not  cease  their  attack  entirely.  Quanna, 
the  half-breed  chief,  fell,  desperately  wounded,  but  it 
was  only  when  reinforcements  came  for  the  beleaguered 
men  that  the  warriors  sullenly  drew  off,  leaving  the 
ground  about  the  adobe  house  covered  with  their  dead. 
Of  the  Kansas  hunters  four  were  killed  and  one  or  two 
others  were  wounded.  The  number  of  Indians  who 
participated  in  the  attack  was  variously  estimated  at 
from  500  to  900.  Probably  both  estimates  were  ex- 
aggerated, but  there  is  no  doubt  the  hunters  were  out- 
numbered fifteen  or  twenty  to  one.  In  no  fight  on  the 
plains  was  greater  coolness  or  daring  displayed,  either 
in  attack  or  defense,  than  was  shown  at  the  fight  of 
the  adobe  walls  on  that  hot  summer  day  of  1874. 

The  Kansas  Rwnnyjnede 

About  forty-five  years  ago  an  enterprising  English- 
man who  had  located  in  Kansas,  evolved  a  new  scheme 
in  high,  not  to  say,  frenzied  finance.  Ned  Turnley  was 
an  original  thinker  by  nature  and  his  native  tendency 
was  accentuated  by  the  Kansas  atmosphere  and  asso- 
ciations. 

He  knew  a  good  deal  about  the  wayward  sons  of 


58  WHEN  KANSAS  WAS  YOUNG 

British  sires  who  had  managed  to  accumulate  money, 
which  the  young  men  desired  principally  to  scatter 
abroad.  The  English  sires  had  a  good  many  anxious 
moments  on  account  of  these  sons.  The  young  fellows 
were  hard  riders,  hard  drinkers,  and  dead  game  sports, 
but  when  it  came  to  matters  of  business  they  dis- 
played a  remarkable  indifference  and  positive  reluc- 
tance to  do  anything  that  savored  of  toil. 

One  of  the  ambitions  of  an  English  squire  is  to  be 
known  as  a  country  gentleman,  the  proprietor  of  broad 
acres,  from  which  he  can  garner  a  comfortable  income 
while  he  is  regarded  with  a  degree  of  deference  by  his 
tenants.  Ned  Turnley  went  to  these  rich  English 
squires  with  a  proposition. 

"Out  on  the  great  wide  and  fertile  plains  of  the 
central  part  of  the  United  States,"  said  Turnley, 
"there  is  the  opportunity  to  develop  these  sons  of 
yours  and  build  up  a  rich  English  colony  which  will  be 
an  honor  to  the  British  empire  and  a  credit  to  your 
family."  He  was  a  bully  good  conversationalist,  was 
Ned  Turnley,  and  he  knew  how  to  appeal  to  these  rich 
Englishmen.  He  painted  a  word  picture  of  a  sunset 
land  with  a  soil  as  rich  as  any  in  the  tight  little  isle, 
where  title  might  be  obtained  to  many  square  leagues, 
on  which  would  graze  vast  herds  of  cattle  and  which, 
turned  up  by  the  plow  and  sown  with  grain,  would  yield 
unlimited  harvests.  What  these  sons  of  theirs  needed, 
he  urged,  was  to  take  a  course  in  farming  and  stock 
raising  under  an  able  and  experienced  instructor. 
They  were  dowered  with  good  blood,  as  he  assured 
their  fathers,  and  by  that  assurance  he  appealed  pow- 
erfully to  the  vanity  of  the  sires.  All  the  young  men 
needed  was  the  opportunity  to  settle  down  and  learn 
the  ways  of  the  broad  prairies  and  the  business  of 
cattle  raising.  His  proposition  was  to  take  these 
young  bloods  to  Kansas  and  train  them  for  the  sum  of 


HAPPENINGS  IN  THE  SEVENTIES        59 

£500  each,  paid  in  hand.  Of  course  the  English  sires 
would  have  to  take  care  of  the  young  bloods'  expenses 
while  the  schooling  was  going  on.  The  fact  that  Turn- 
ley  was  able  to  put  such  a  plan  across  and  actually 
secured  one  hundred  of  these  wild  young  Englishmen 
for  his  colony,  marked  him  as  a  financial  genius  and 
one  of  the  greatest  confidence  men  of  his  time. 

In  order  to  get  the  consent  of  the  young  bloods  to 
come  to  the  West,  it  was  necessary  to  tell  a  different 
story.  To  them  Turnley  pictured  a  land  which  was 
the  paradise  of  the  hunter  and  his  hounds.  He  told 
of  the  vast  stretches  of  prairie,  unvexed  by  the  plow 
and  unhampered  by  settlers,  where  wolves  and  antelope 
were  plenty  and  the  great  jack  rabbit  furnished  better 
sport  than  the  English  hare.  To  them  there  was  no 
talk  of  tilling  the  soil  or  watching  over  the  lowing 
herds.  His  story  appealed  mightily  to  these  young 
Englishmen.  They  were  fully  as  anxious  to  come  as 
their  fathers  were  to  have  them  come  and  so  with  his 
colony  of  one  hundred,  and  in  his  pockets  a  quarter  of 
a  million  of  good  English  bank  notes,  Turnley  began 
his  unique  experiment.  The  locality  selected  was  the 
beautiful  valley  of  the  Chicaskia,  fifty  miles  southwest 
of  Wichita  and  on  the  border  of  Harper  County,  Kan- 
sas. Here  he  founded  the  town  of  Runnymede,  in  honor 
of  the  historic  spot  so  dear  to  Englishmen,  where  the 
stout  barons  wrested  the  charter  of  British  freedom 
from  a  reluctant  king. 

For  a  good  many  months  the  young  Englishmen 
found  the  sport  fully  up  to  expectations.  The  best 
kennels  of  England  were  drawn  upon  to  furnish  deep- 
voiced  hounds  and  blooded  chargers  were  imported  for 
the  mounts.  Joyously  and  recklessly  the  sons  of  proud 
English  sires  rode  to  the  chase.  A  large  hotel  was 
erected  at  the  new  town  of  Runnymede  to  accommodate 
them  and  here  night  after  night  they  held  high  car- 


60  WHEN  KANSAS  WAS  YOUNG 

nival  and  pledged  each  other's  health  in  sparkling 
champagne  or  good,  old  foaming  English  ale. 

Horse  races,  cock  fights,  and  sparring  matches  were 
the  order  of  the  day  and  night.  There  was  some  pre- 
tense of  farming,  but  that  was  done  by  proxy.  The 
young  Englishmen  were  too  busy  having  a  good  time  to 
do  any  real  work. 

It  must  be  said  for  them  that  they  were  good  sports, 
too.  Someone  arranged  a  bout  with  a  local  prize 
fighter  of  Wichita  named  Paddy  Shea.  He  took  on 
one  of  the  young  Englishmen  who  was  a  willing  soul, 
but  no  match  for  the  prize  fighter  in  the  fistic  art. 
Paddy  knocked  the  Englishman  out  and  it  was  several 
minutes  before  he  awoke  from  his  dream.  When  he 
came  out  of  his  trance  and  learned  how  Paddy  had 
done  it  he  was  so  pleased  that  he  insisted  on  present- 
ing the  fighter  with  a  handsome  present,  just  to  show 
that  he  "was  a  good  sport,  don't  you  know." 

On  one  occasion  there  was  a  horse  race  at  the  new 
town  of  Harper  and  the  English  made  a  winning  of 
$1,500.  They  immediately  took  possession  of  the  lead- 
ing booze  dispensary,  helped  themselves  to  everything 
drinkable  there  was  about  the  place  and  insisted  on 
everybody  in  town  partaking  of  their  hospitality.  By 
morning  there  was  nothing  weaker  than  sulphuric  acid 
left  in  the  drug  store.  The  revelers  presented  the 
$1,500  won  on  the  race  to  the  proprietor  of  the  booze 
emporium  and  departed  joyously,  ready  for  further 
adventure. 

After  a  time  the  fathers  back  in  England  began  to 
grow  weary  of  sending  remittances.  Probably  also 
they  received  some  reports  of  what  was  actually  going 
on  and  sent  for  their  sons  to  come  home.  So  the  glory 
of  the  Kansas  Runnymede  waned  and  the  Turnley 
colony  became  a  memory. 

Twenty  years  ago  or  such  a  matter  a  railroad,  the 


HAPPENINGS  IN  THE  SEVENTIES        61 

Kansas  City,  Mexico  &  Orient,  was  built  through  the 
old  town  of  Runnymede  and  where  there  had  been 
revelry  by  night  and  also  by  day,  there  was  established 
a  new  and  quiet  village.  It  still  bears  the  historic 
name  of  Runnymede,  but  of  the  colony  of  hard-riding 
and  hard-drinking  young  Englishmen  there  remain  no 
reminders  except  a  single  grave  where  lies  buried  one 
of  the  men  who  came  so  blithely  to  Kansas  nearly  half 
a  century  ago  and  broke  the  silence  of  the  prairies 
with  the  baying  of  their  hounds  and  huntsman  horns. 


The  Comanche  Steal 

One  day  in  the  summer  of  1872  two  or  three  buffalo 
hunters  were  riding  through  the  favorite  grazing 
grounds  of  the  then  countless  herds  of  bison  in  south- 
western Kansas  when  they  came  upon  a  camp  of  five 
men.  Three  of  the  men  were  A.  J.  Mowery  and  James 
Duncan,  of  Doniphan  County,  and  Alexander  Mills, 
of  Topeka;  the  other  two  were  residents  of  Hutchin- 
son,  probably  C.  C.  Beemis  and  Major  Bowlus,  but  of 
that  I  am  not  certain.  The  five  were  busily  engaged  in 
working  out  a  plan  for  the  organization  and  subsequent 
looting  of  Comanche  County.  They  had  their  plans 
about  completed,  but  needed  a  county  attorney  and 
proposed  to  one  of  the  buffalo  hunters,  J.  S.  Cox,  that 
he  take  the  position.  Cox  was  not  a  lawyer,  but  they 
assured  him  that  a  total  lack  of  legal  knowledge  was 
not  an  objection  but  rather  an  advantage.  To  have 
a  county  attorney  who  was  a  lawyer  in  the  organization 
they  were  forming  might  be  embarrassing.  Cox  seems 
to  have  fallen  in  with  the  proposition  in  that  free  and 
easy  way  of  buffalo  hunters,  not  regarding  it  seri- 
ously. The  quintet  then  unfolded  to  him  their  plan, 
which  was  really  charmingly  simple.  It  was  to  or- 


62  WHEN  KANSAS  WAS  YOUNG 

ganize  the  county,  send  Mowery  to  the  Legislature  to 
secure  the  passage  of  a  law  authorizing  Comanche 
County  to  issue  bonds  for  the  building  of  a  court  house, 
building  bridges  and  $20,000  or  $30,000  for  the  pay- 
ment of  general  expenses.  The  second  part  of  the  in- 
teresting program  was  the  organization  of  school  dis- 
tricts and  the  voting  of  almost  unlimited  school  bonds. 
The  new  county  attorney  listened  in  amazement.  He 
knew  that  within  the  900  square  miles  of  territory  they 
proposed  to  include  in  the  county,  there  was  hardly  a 
single  bona  fide  inhabitant  and  not  a  dollar's  worth  of 
taxable  property,  except  some  roving  herds  of  cattle 
which  could  easily  be  driven  out  of  the  reach  of  the 
assessor.  He  was  curious  to  know  who  would  buy  the 
bonds  issued  by  such  a  brazenly  fraudulent  organi- 
zation and  was  told  that  in  Topeka  there  was  just  as 
good  a  market  for  a  fraudulent  bond  as  a  genuine, 
the  only  difference  being  the  price. 

So,  with  no  one  to  molest  or  make  them  afraid,  the 
band  of  thieves  matured  their  plans  and  put  them  into 
execution.  From  St.  Joe  hotel  registers,  supplied  pre- 
sumably by  Mowery,  the  names  of  residents  were  gath- 
ered. A  census  taker  was  appointed,  one  A.  Upde- 
graff,  the  son  of  an  honest  father  and  mother  who  had 
fallen  among  evil  companions  and  who  was  persuaded 
to  become  the  handy  tool  of  thieves,  although  he  prob- 
ably received  but  little  share  of  the  plunder.  Within 
the  brief  period  of  ten  days  or  less  Updegraff,  accord- 
ing to  the  record,  rode  or  walked  several  hundred  miles 
over  trackless  prairies  of  Comanche  County,  gath- 
ered the  names  of  600  bona  fide  inhabitants,  solemnly 
swore  to  the  correctness  of  the  list,  and  forwarded  his 
report  to  the  governor's  office  at  Topeka,  and  on  Octo- 
ber 28,  1873,  the  proclamation  was  issued  declaring  the 
county  duly  organized. 

Election  day  was  drawing  near  and  according  to 


HAPPENINGS  IN  THE  SEVENTIES        63 

program  Andrew  Mowery  was  selected  by  the  five  to 
represent  the  county  in  the  lower  house  of  the  Legis- 
lature. It  was  an  easy  and  inexpensive  election.  Two 
hundred  and  forty  names  were  copied  from  the  con- 
venient St.  Joe  hotel  register  and  voted  for  Mowery. 
Certificates  of  election  were  forwarded  to  the  secretary 
of  state  and  at  the  opening  of  the  legislative  session  in 
January,  1874,  Mowery  appeared  with  his  credentials 
and  was  sworn  in  as  a  member  of  the  law-making  body. 
Everything  moved  with  the  smoothness  of  well  oiled  ma- 
chinery. The  fraudulent  commissioners  were  author- 
ized to  issue  bonds  for  various  purposes  and  did  issue 
$29,000  to  C.  C.  Beemis  to  build  a  court  house.  Getting 
court  house  bonds  was  Beemis'  specialty.  It  will  be  re- 
called by  those  who  have  read  the  section,  "The  Loot- 
ing of  a  County,"  that  the  Barber  county  commis- 
sioners issued  at  different  periods  to  this  same  Beemis 
some  $65,000  in  warrants,  afterwards  funded  into 
bonds,  to  build  a  court  house.  In  addition  to  the  court 
house  bonds  the  county  commissioners  issued  $23,000 
bridge  bonds  and  $20,000  bonds  to  pay  general  ex- 
penses, in  all  $72,000.  Then  came  the  second  part  of 
the  program,  the  organization  of  school  districts  and 
the  issuing  of  bonds.  This  opened  an  inviting  and  ex- 
tensive field,  but  it  was  through  the  school  bond  steal 
that  the  looters  came  to  grief.  School  district  No.  1 
was  organized  about  the  county  seat,  in  which  there 
was  one  cabin,  named  in  honor  of  the  then  secretary  of 
state,  Smallwood,  who  was  also  one  of  the  board  desig- 
nated by  law  to  care  for  and  invest  the  school  funds  of 
the  state.  District  No.  1  issued  bonds  to  the  extent 
of  $2,000  and  Representative  Mowery  came  with  the 
bonds  to  Topeka  and  offered  them  for  sale  to  the  per- 
manent school  fund.  With  the  approval  of  Secretary 
Smallwood  and  the  superintendent  of  public  instruc- 
tion, a  gentleman  by  the  name  of  McCarty,  Mowery 


64?  WHEN  KANSAS  WAS  YOUNG 

sold  the  bonds  for  $1,750  and  either  pocketed  the 
money  himself  or  divided  his  loot  with  his  confederates. 
It  was  planned  to  load  the  school  fund  with  at  least 
$40,000  more  but  happily  the  attorney  general  inter- 
fered with  the  arrangement.  The  secretary  of  state 
and  state  superintendent  attempted  to  clear  their 
skirts,  but  if  they  were  not  positively  dishonest  they 
certainly  were  criminally  negligent  of  their  duty. 

Having  apparently  concluded  that  they  had  gathered 
about  all  the  harvest  of  loot  there  was  to  gather,  the 
organizers  of  Comanche  abandoned  it  to  the  buffalo 
and  the  coyote,  and  in  1876  Mowery,  who  had  gone  back 
to  Doniphan  County,  somehow  persuaded  his  neighbors 
to  send  him  to  the  Legislature  from  that  county,  al- 
though the  record  of  his  villainy  had  become  generally 
known.  The  Legislature  of  1876  expelled  him  and  at 
the  instance  of  the  attorney  general  he  was  arrested, 
charged  with  having  forged  the  school  bonds  he  had 
sold  to  the  state.  When  notified  that  he  was  to  be  ar- 
rested he  fled  the  state,  but  was  apprehended  over  in 
Missouri  and  brought  back  for  trial.  For  want  of  posi- 
tive evidence  of  the  forgery,  the  county  attorney  of 
Shawnee  County  dismissed  the  suit  and  Mowery  went 
free. 

It  is  a  shameful  fact  that  not  one  of  the  thieves  en- 
gaged in  the  fraudulent  organization  of  Barber,  Co- 
manche and  other  counties  was  ever  punished  by  law  for 
his  crime.  If  a  citizen  buys  a  horse  in  perfect  good 
faith  and  afterwards  finds  that  it  was  stolen  he  must 
restore  it  to  the  owner  when  the  latter  proves  his  title. 
The  fact  that  he  was  an  innocent  purchaser  does  not 
save  him  from  loss,  but  although  it  was  common  knowl- 
edge that  the  region  in  which  Comanche  County  was 
located  was  in  1872,  1873,  and  1874  an  uninhabited 
wilderness,  the  purchasers  of  the  fraudulent  bonds  were 
not  required  to  beware  of  their  purchase.  The  courts 


HAPPENINGS  IN  THE  SEVENTIES        65 

protected  them,  saddled  the  burden  of  the  utterly 
fraudulent  obligations  on  subsequent  settlers,  who  had 
no  part  in  their  making,  and  then  failed  to  mete  out 
any  punishment  to  the  thieves.  No  wonder  the  man 
who  is  serving  a  term  of  years  in  the  penitentiary  for 
stealing  a  calf  or  a  few  dollars,  cannot  see  the  justice 
of  a  law  which  punishes  him  with  great  severity,  while 
thieves  who  boldly  plundered  through  fraudulent  bond 
deals  to  the  extent  of  hundreds  of  thousands  of  dollars 
are  permitted  to  go  scot  free  and  even  pose  as  honor- 
able citizens. 

Most  of  the  plunderers  who  operated  in  Barber  and 
Comanche  Counties  have  gone  to  their  final  rewards. 
The  last  time  I  saw  the  census  taker  of  the  fraudulent 
organization  of  Comanche  he  was  suffering  from  a 
severe  bullet  wound  received  in  an  impromptu  duel  on 
the  streets  of  Dodge  City  with  the  celebrated  Bat  Mas- 
terson,  the  other  party  to  the  shooting.  He  revived 
from  that  to  die  later  from  smallpox  and  was  laid 
away  by  the  gamblers  and  demimonde  of  that  then 
wild  frontier  town.  The  others,  who  were  much  more 
guilty  than  Al  Updegraff,  have  gone,  I  do  not  know 
where,  but  if  there  is  an  old-fashioned  orthodox  hell 
they  are  probably  meditating  on  their  past  sins  as  they 
roast  in  the  sulphurous  habitations  of  the  damned. 


The  Legislature  of  1875 

An  examination  of  the  files  of  the  old  Common- 
wealth during  the  legislative  session  of  1875  is  cal- 
culated to  take  the  conceit  out  of  the  modern  legisla- 
tive reporter.  Not  only  were  the  legislative  re- 
ports in  the  Commonwealth  of  that  date  more  full 
and  enlightening  than  the  legislative  reports  in 
any  paper  I  know  of  at  the  present  time,  but  they  were 


66  WHEN  KANSAS  WAS  YOUNG 

put  up  in  better  literary  style  and  had  in  them  more 
of  the  human  interest.  Possibly  the  session  of  1875 
was  no  more  interesting  than  many  other  sessions  of 
that  early  day,  but  it  happened  that  the  Legislature 
contained  a  good  many  men  who  had  considerable  to 
do  with  shaping  Kansas  history  and  several  of  them 
afterward  rose  to  prominence. 

The  speaker  of  the  House  was  Ed  Funston,  big  of 
body  and  with  a  sonorous  voice  which  gave  him  the 
name  of  "Fog  Horn  Funston."  He  afterward  served 
with  distinction  for  eleven  years  in  the  lower  house  of 
Congress  and  had  the  added  distinction  of  being  the 
father  of  General  Fred  Funston.  The  chief  clerk  of 
the  House  was  Captain  Henry  Booth,  formerly  of  the 
United  States  regular  army  and  afterward  for  many 
years  receiver  of  the  United  States  land  office  at 
Lamed.  Among  the  members  were  Dudley  C.  Haskell, 
of  Lawrence,  gigantic  in  stature,  brilliant  in  intellect. 
As  a  member  of  Congress  he  rose  rapidly  to  distinction 
until  cut  off  by  premature  death.  Had  he  lived,  he 
would  have  ranked  as  one  of  the  great  men  of  the 
nation.  There  was  also  Jim  Legate,  cynical,  crafty  and 
resourceful,  dowered  by  nature  with  a  great  brain  but 
unfortunately  with  a  lack  of  moral  perception  which 
ruined  his  usefulness  and  blighted  his  career.  There 
was  Billie  Buchan,  then  young,  ambitious  and  daring, 
who  never  realized  his  ambition  to  go  to  Congress  but 
who  was  able  to  make  and  unmake  a  good  many  men. 
Sam  Benedict,  of  Wilson  County,  tall,  spare,  hampered 
by  ill  health  a  good  deal  of  the  time,  which  tended 
to  spoil  his  temper,  possessed  of  rare  good  sense  and 
unimpeachable  integrity,  a  graduate  of  Williams  Col- 
lege, and  a  man  of  wide  reading  and  fine  literary  taste, 
never  seemed  to  care  particularly  for  either  political 
honors  or  leadership,  but  was  a  most  valuable  member 
of  the  Legislature,  because  he  hated  anything  that 


HAPPENINGS  IN  THE  SEVENTIES       67 

smelled  of  graft  and  had  no  patience  with  extravagance 
or  what  seemed  to  him  foolish  legislation.  There  also 
was  P.  P.  Elder,  then  a  Republican,  afterward  a  leader 
of  Greenbackism  and  Populism,  forceful  and  careless 
in  his  use  of  language,  and  generally  known  as  the 
most  artistic  swearer  among  the  public  men  of  the 
state.  Also  there  came  to  the  Legislature  from  Ford 
that  unique  frontiersman,  Bob  Wright,  of  Dodge. 

In  the  Senate  there  was  the  scholarly  jurist,  Solon 
O.  Thatcher,  and  the  later  chief  justice  of  the  supreme 
court,  Albert  H.  Horton.  Sam  R.  Peters  came  from 
Marion  to  the  Senate,  but  afterward  moved  to  Newton 
and,  after  serving  for  two  terms  as  judge  of  the  old 
Ninth  judicial  district,  which  took  in  about  all  of  the 
southwest  quarter  of  Kansas,  was  elected  to  Congress, 
where  he  remained  for  eight  years,  refusing  a  re- 
nomination  in  1890,  which  showed  his  rare  political 
judgment,  for  it  was  in  that  year  that  the  wave  of 
Populism  swept  over  the  state  and  submerged  all  but 
two  of  the  Republican  candidates  for  Congress.  Wil- 
liam Alfred  Peffer  came  as  a  senator  from  Montgomery. 
At  that  time  a  strict  party  man  and  ardent  advocate 
of  high  protection,  he  probably  had  no  premonition 
of  the  political  revolution  which  fifteen  years  later  was 
to  separate  him  from  the  party  of  his  young  man- 
hood and  land  him  in  the  United  States  Senate,  as  a 
member  of  which  body  he  was  to  become  one  of  the 
most  talked  about  and  most  generally  cartooned  men 
in  the  nation. 

At  the  beginning  of  the  session  the  Commonwealth 
speaks  of  the  Legislature  as  an  exceptionally  fine  body 
of  men,  but  at  the  close  sadly  admits  that  blamed 
little  of  real  worth  had  been  accomplished,  which  may 
be  said  of  most  legislatures.  The  year  1874  had  been 
one  of  widespread  disaster  to  Kansas.  The  swarms  of 
grasshoppers  had  devoured  practically  every  green 


68  WHEN  KANSAS  WAS  YOUNG 

thing.  In  the  west  half  of  the  state  drouth  had  burned 
up  what  little  the  hoppers  had  left  and  the  principal 
topic  before  the  Legislature  was  how  to  get  aid  for 
the  sufferers.  There  was  a  general  disposition  to  call 
on  the  general  government  for  assistance,  but  among 
a  number  state  pride  revolted  at  the  idea  of  going 
abroad  to  ask  for  alms.  It  was  proposed  to  issue  state 
bonds  to  secure  the  necessary  money  for  the  purchase 
of  seed  wheat  and  necessary  supplies  to  tide  the  settlers 
over  until  another  crop  could  be  raised,  but  the  lawyers 
in  the  body  were  raising  constitutional  objections 
which  so  irked  the  mind  of  Bob  Wright,  of  Dodge,  that 
he  introduced  the  following  resolution: 

"Resolved:  That  100,000  copies  of  the  constitution  be 
printed  in  pamphlet  form  for  distribution  among  the  desti- 
tute people  of  western  Kansas  to  enable  them  to  get 
through  the  winter  and  to  furnish  seed  wheat  for  planting; 
and  in  order  that  all  persons  may  be  provided  it  is  ordered 
that  25,000  of  these  pamphlets  be  printed  in  Irish,  25,000 
in  German  and  50,000  in  English,  and  in  order  that  no 
expenditure  may  be  made  for  expressage  and  freight  on 
the  same,  each  member  is  expected  to  carry  home  in  his 
carpet  sack  the  quota  belonging  to  his  county." 

In  spite  of  the  fact  that  the  Legislature  contained 
so  many  men  of  ability  and  experience,  there  was  the 
same  tendency  to  hasty  and  careless  legislation  noted 
in  every  legislative  body.  For  example,  there  was 
House  Bill  21,  to  prevent  the  spread  of  certain  con- 
tagious diseases  among  horses,  mules,  and  asses,  the 
first  section  of  which  read  as  follows: 

"Sec.  1 :  That  it  shall  be  unlawful  for  the  owner  of  any 
horse,  mule,  or  ass  affected  by  the  diseases  known  as  nasal 
gleet,  glanders  or  button-farcey,  and  any  person  so  offend- 
ing, shall  be  guilty  of  a  misdemeanor  and  shall  upon  con- 
viction be  punished  by  a  fine  of  not  less  than  fifty  dollars 
nor  more  than  five  hundred  dollars  and  in  default  of  pay- 


HAPPENINGS  IN  THE  SEVENTIES        69 

ment  shall  be  imprisoned  for  any  period  not  exceeding 
twelve  months,  or  by  both  such  fine  and  imprisonment  at 
the  discretion  of  the  court." 

Passing  over  the  question  as  to  whether  the  bill 
meant  that  the  owner  of  the  horses,  mules,  and  asses 
or  the  beasts  themselves  were  affected  by  all  of  these 
diseases,  the  language  leaves  one  in  complete  ignorance 
as  to  what  said  owner  is  guilty  of,  whether  of  owning 
the  animals  or  having  the  disease,  and  yet  the  bill  with 
this  identical  language  had  passed  through  the  hands 
of  the  committee  on  agriculture  and  been  recommended 
for  passage. 

Chan  Brown,  afterward  for  many  years  clerk  of 
the  supreme  court,  represented  Marshall  County.  He 
was  interested  in  the  propagating  of  fish  in  the  state 
and  introduced  a  bill  requiring  owners  of  dams  to 
construct  chutes  or  fish  ladders  over  the  same.  His 
bill  met  with  little  encouragement.  Future  Congress- 
man Haskell  insisted  that  the  fish  in  Kansas  were  too 
big  and  lubberly  to  climb  ladders  over  dams  and  Sam 
Benedict  said  that  the  only  kind  of  fish  there  were  in 
the  state  were  buffalo  fish  and  catfish,  neither  of  which 
could  get  up  one  of  the  fish  chutes  and  wouldn't  be 
worth  anything  if  they  did,  as  "no  white  man  would 
eat  one  of  them."  Sam  was  always  more  or  less  dys- 
peptic, which  accounted  for  his  taste. 

The  most  picturesque  character  in  the  Legislature  of 
1875  was  Representative  Carter  from  Sumner.  Carter 
was  a  Democrat.  How  he  happened  to  be  elected  is 
not  disclosed,  but  it  may  be  accounted  for  on  the  theory 
that  Sumner,  which  at  that  time  was  a  frontier  county, 
had  a  good  many  Texas  cattle  men  among  its  citizens 
who  were  Democrats  of  the  old  southern  type  who 
wouldn't  vote  for  a  Republican  under  any  considera- 
tion and,  furthermore,  most  of  the  frontier  citizens 
were  not  greatly  interested  in  politics  and  didn't  care 


70  WHEN  KANSAS  WAS  YOUNG 

a  hoot  who  went  to  the  Legislature.  In  the  files  of 
the  Commonwealth  under  the  title,  "The  Leader  of 
Democracy,"  may  be  found  a  word  picture  of  the 
Sumner  County  statesman,  which  ranks  almost  with 
the  classical  description  of  "Chang"  by  John  J.  Ingalls 
in  his  famous  sketch,  "Catfish  Aristocracy." 

"Imagine,"  says  the  Commonwealth  reporter,  "a  tall, 
angular,  loose- jointed,  shuffling-gaited  specimen  from 
the  banks  of  the  Wabash,  or  the  mountains  of  Ten- 
nessee. The  inequality  of  outline  in  this  physical  con- 
formation suggests  the  idea  that  the  various  features 
which  go  to  make  up  the  physiological  unit  called 
Carter  once  belonged  to  as  many  different  men,  from 
whom  they  were  violently  torn  from  time  to  time  and 
at  length  thrown  together  with  a  contemptuous  dis- 
regard of  order,  propriety,  and  the  fundamental  princi- 
ples of  architecture.  Surmounting  this  structure  is  a 
head  calculated  to  arrest  the  attention  of  the  most 
observant.  Narrow  at  the  base — proof  sufficient  of 
austere  virtue — it  gradually  contracts  as  it  ascends 
to  a  tiny  bulb,  resembling  a  poke  berry,  but  called 
the  organ  of  veneration,  forming  the  apex.  Carter's 
facial  aspect  is  among  the  marvels  of  physiognomy. 
Over  the  scarred  and  wrinkled  surface  the  rank  vegeta- 
tion of  his  beard  throws  a  melancholy  shade.  Bushy 
eyebrows  stand  sentinel  over  opaque  and  bulbous  orbs, 
above  which  mounts  the  'dome  of  thought'  to  the  height 
of  perhaps  an  inch  and  a  quarter." 

The  statesman  from  Sumner  had  one  pet  bill  on 
which  he  expected  his  legislative  fame  to  stand.  It 
was  an  act  to  protect  horses,  mules,  and  cattle  from 
being  poisoned  by  the  castor  bean.  Section  1  of  this 
bill  read  as  follows :  "Any  person  or  persons  growing 
or  cultivating  castor  beans  in  the  state  of  Kansas 
shall  inclose  or  cause  the  same  to  be  inclosed  with  a 
lawful  fence."  He  watched  his  measure  anxiously  as 


HAPPENINGS  IN  THE  SEVENTIES        71 

it  slid  back  on  the  calendar  until  the  very  last  days 
of  the  session  were  at  hand  and  with  no  prospect  of 
its  passage.  Then  the  house  leaders,  Legate,  Bill 
Buchan,  and  Dudley  Haskell  came  to  his  rescue.  They 
assured  him  that  they  had  become  convinced  his  bill 
had  great  merit  and  that  they  would  see  that  it  got 
before  the  committee  of  the  whole  house  for  considera- 
tion. Carter  was  pleased.  He  assured  them  that  he 
would  not  like  to  go  back  to  his  people  without  having 
done  something  to  curb  the  deadly  ravages  of  the  castor 
bean  and  would  appreciate  their  help. 

Before  final  adjournment  Jim  Legate  solemnly  arose 
and  moved  that  the  house  resolve  itself  into  committee 
of  the  whole  for  the  consideration  of  house  bill  224, 
the  castor  bean  bill,  and  suggested  that  it  would  be 
only  fitting  that  the  gentleman  from  Sumner  should  be 
called  to  the  chair.  Carter  was  elated  and  taking  the 
gavel  rapped  loudly  for  order,  announcing  that  the 
house  was  now  in  committee  of  the  whole  for  the  con- 
sideration of  house  bill  224. 

The  first  motion  was  made  by  Bill  Buchan,  the 
member  from  Wyandotte,  that  the  word  Kansas  be 
stricken  out  and  Arkansaw  substituted  therefor.  The 
chairman  looked  puzzled  and  said  it  seemed  to  him 
"that-ar  motion"  was  out  of  order.  Buchan,  however, 
insisted  with  such  earnestness  on  his  motion  that  the 
chairman  put  it  to  the  house.  It  received  a  loud  and 
unanimous  vote  in  the  affirmative  and  when  the  nays 
were  called  for  the  vote  was  equally  unanimous.  The 
chairman  was  in  doubt,  but  said  it  sort  of  seemed  to 
him  that  the  ayes  had  it. 

Jim  Legate  then  arose  and  gravely  moved  to  amend 
the  second  line  by  substituting  the  word  oil  for  beans, 
so  that  the  section  would  read  "Any  person  or  persons 
growing  or  cultivating  castor  oil,"  etc.  This  amend- 
ment also  carried  by  the  same  overwhelming1  vote. 


72  WHEN  KANSAS  WAS  YOUNG 

Then  with  towering  stature  and  deep  bass  voice 
arose  Dudley  Haskell  and  said :  "Mr.  Chairman :  The 
section  as  amended  lacks  harmony  and  felicity  of  ex- 
pression. I  move  the  following  substitute  for  the  entire 
section:  'Section  1.  Any  person  or  persons  using 
castor  oil  in  the  state  of  Kansas  shall  be  inclosed  with 
a  lawful  fence.' ' 

The  house,  lobby  and  galleries  howled  and  rocked 
with  unholy  mirth.  It  was  dawning  on  the  statesman 
from  Sumner  that  a  job  had  been  set  up  on  him  and 
he  was  stirred  with  righteous  anger.  He  ordered  the 
sergeant-at-arms  to  preserve  order  and  clear  the  lobby 
and  raged  ineffectively  when  he  saw  his  authority  and 
orders  set  at  naught. 

At  this  point  Buchan  arose,  his  face  apparently 
covered  with  gloom  and  said  that  he  was  grieved  to 
see  a  worthy  measure  treated  with  levity  and  riotous 
disorder  unbecoming  the  dignity  of  the  house.  He 
thought,  however,  that  the  phraseology  of  the  bill 
should  be  changed  somewhat  and  moved  that  section  5, 
the  final  section,  be  amended  to  read:  "Section  5. 
This  oil  shall  be  in  force  and  take  effect  from  and  after 
its  use  once  by  the  chair,"  and  with  a  wild  and  joyous 
whoop  the  bill,  so  changed  and  amended,  was  recom- 
mended for  passage. 

In  the  years  that  have  fled  since  then  all  the  principal 
actors  in  the  legislature  of  1875  have  passed  on. 
Billie  Buchan,  Funston,  Haskell,  Legate,  Elder, 
Horton,  Peters,  Benedict,  Bob  Wright,  Henry  Booth, 
Peffer  and  Thatcher  have  joined  the  silent  majority, 
the  unnumbered  multitude  of  the  dead. 


HAPPENINGS  IN  THE  SEVENTIES       73 

A  Whisky  Murder 

Medicine  Lodge  never  acquired  the  reputation  of 
being  a  wild  and  woolly  town  in  the  sense  that  that 
name  attached  to  Dodge  City,  or  Wichita  in  its  early 
days,  or  Newton  or  Abilene  when  they  were  the  end 
of  the  Texas  cattle  drive,  or  Caldwell  or  Hunnewell 
in  the  days  of  their  pristine  glory.  Before  the  rail- 
road reached  Medicine  Lodge,  the  day  of  the  cattle 
drive  was  passed,  and  while  a  bad  man  occasionally 
sojourned  there  for  a  night,  or  maybe  a  week,  there 
was  no  congregation  of  killers.  Medicine  Lodge  never 
had  a  dance  hall  such  as  flourished  in  each  of  the  other 
towns,  when  they  were  the  objectives  of  the  vast  herds 
driven  over  the  long  trail  from  the  vast  plains  of 
Texas  on  their  way  to  the  markets  of  the  North  and 
East. 

Still  there  were  some  tragedies,  and  this  story  re- 
lates to  one  which  I  think  had  something  to  do  with 
the  fact  that  in  the  election  of  1880  this  frontier 
county  gave  a  majority  for  the  prohibitory  amend- 
ment to  our  state  constitution.  While  there  was  not 
so  much  of  it  sold  as  in  some  of  the  towns,  the  quality 
of  the  whisky  sold  in  Medicine  Lodge  was  as  bad  as  the 
worst.  I  have  known  men  who  were  ordinarily  quiet  and 
peaceable  when  sober,  after  imbibing  a  few  drinks  of 
the  beverage,  to  go  stark  mad  for  the  time  being  and 
become  more  dangerous  than  Bengal  tigers.  I  know 
a  most  reputable  man,  kindly,  law-abiding  and  in  every 
way  a  model  citizen  for  many  years  past,  who  con- 
fesses that  he  shudders  when  he  thinks  of  how  near 
he  came  to  being  a  murderer  when  crazed  by  a  few 
drinks  of  border  drug  store  whisky.  But  that  is  an- 
other story. 

One  May  day  in  1879  a  country  boy,  perhaps  nine- 
teen or  twenty  years  of  age,  rode  into  town.  John 


74  WHEN  KANSAS  WAS  YOUNG 

Garten  had  not  been  known  as  a  "bad  man."  He  was 
just  an  ordinary,  gawky,  green  country  boy,  who  had 
reached  the  age  when  he  probably  thought  it  would 
be  smart  to  show  off  and  also  an  indication  of  manly 
quality  to  fill  his  hide  with  drink.  It  was  probably 
this  ambition,  rather  than  any  confirmed  appetite  for 
liquor,  that  caused  him  to  take  on  several  drinks. 
Probably  at  that,  nothing  serious  would  have  hap- 
pened if  he  had  not  been  filled  with  another  ambition, 
and  that  was  to  carry  a  gun  and  acquire  the  ability 
to  draw  and  shoot  like  one  of  those  gun  fighters  he  had 
heard  about. 

It  was  along  toward  evening  of  the  long  beautiful 
day  in  the  latter  part  of  May,  that  young  Garten 
mounted  his  horse,  probably  at  the  suggestion  of  the 
town  marshal  and  rode  out  of  town,  emitting  a  few 
"whoops"  as  he  rode.  A  few  miles  west  of  the  Lodge, 
at  a  crossing  of  one  of  the  little  tributaries  of  the 
Medicine,  he  overtook  two  women,  a  mother  and  her 
daughter.  They  stepped  to  the  side  of  the  road  to 
let  him  pass.  He  rode  past  them  a  few  rods  and  then 
with  a  drunken  howl  pulled  his  pistol  from  its  holster 
and  fired  two  shots  in  the  direction  of  the  women. 
With  a  cry  of  anguish  the  younger  woman,  Mrs.  Stead- 
man,  fell  mortally  wounded.  It  is  quite  probable  that 
young  Garten  did  not  know  that  he  had  hit  either 
woman,  for  he  rode  on  without  further  looking  back- 
ward, stopped  at  the  ranch  where  he  had  been  work- 
ing, unsaddled  his  horse  and  made  no  effort  to  escape. 
He  expressed  great  surprise  when  a  few  hours  after- 
ward the  tall,  gaunt  frontier  sheriff  rode  up  to  the 
ranch  house  and  said  quietly,  "John,  I  want  you  for 
murder." 

Garten  protested  that  he  had  just  intended  to  give 
the  women  a  scare  and  didn't  suppose  he  had  hit  either 
one  of  them,  and  quite  probably  he  was  telling  the 


HAPPENINGS  IN  THE  SEVENTIES        75 

truth.  The  murder  aroused  a  storm  of  indignation 
when  young  Garten  was  brought  into  town.  An  in- 
offensive, popular  young  woman  had  been  shot  down 
without  any  provocation  and  there  was  talk  of  the  law 
of  the  border.  There  were  mutterings  of  vengeance 
and  knots  of  men  gathered  and  conversed  in  low  earnest 
tones,  more  dangerous  than  any  loud  threats  or 
bluster.  A  few  hours  afterward  the  big  lank,  weather- 
beaten  sheriff  with  the  prisoner  in  charge,  rode  away 
through  the  moonless  night  to  the  northward  and  put 
Garten  for  safe  keeping  in  the  Rice  County  jail  to 
await  his  trial.  In  those  days  there  were  only  two 
terms  of  court  in  Barber  County  and  before  the  time 
for  Garten's  trial  he  escaped  from  jail  and,  it  was 
believed,  fled  to  the  mountains  of  New  Mexico. 

The  father  of  the  murdered  woman  was  a  lean, 
powerful  man  by  the  name  of  Champion,  a  typical 
frontiersman.  I  think  he  had  come  originally  from 
the  mountains  of  Kentucky  or  Tennessee  and  if  so  was 
born  to  believe  in  the  doctrine  of  the  blood  avenger. 
Sparing  of  speech  and  stern  of  face,  Champion  made 
little  demonstration  of  his  grief,  though  it  was  under- 
stood that  he  possessed  a  quiet  and  deep  affection 
for  his  children.  When  the  news  came  that  Garten 
had  broken  jail,  Champion  said  nothing,  but  those 
who  were  in  his  confidence  knew  that  he  had  gone  to 
New  Mexico.  For  almost  a  year  nothing  was  heard 
from  him,  but  there  was  a  persistent  rumor  that  he 
was  playing  the  part  of  the  avenger  of  blood;  that 
he  had  gone  on  a  relentless,  tireless  man  hunt  for  the 
slayer  of  his  first  born.  Finally  he  returned.  He  said 
nothing  for  publication,  but  there  was  the  look  on  his 
face  of  a  man  who  had  accomplished  his  task  and 
fulfilled  the  old  law,  the  'law  still  of  the  mountains, 
an  eye  for  an  eye,  a  life  for  a  life. 

No  one  outside  of  Champion  and  his  few  confidants 


76  WHEN  KANSAS  WAS  YOUNG 

knew  what  had  been  the  result  of  that  long  year's  hunt 
through  the  mountains  and  over  the  burning  desert 
sands,  but  Garten  was  never  found  by  the  authorities 
or  returned  for  trial.  Those  who  knew  the  boy  never 
believed  that  he  was  a  willful  and  deliberate  murderer. 
His  crime  was  the  direct  result  of  the  villainous  liquor 
that  was  sold  in  the  frontier  town.  At  the  next  elec- 
tion the  question  was  up  to  amend  the  constitution  so 
as  to  make  the  sale  of  whisky  as  a  beverage  forever 
unlawful.  The  rough  bearded  men  riding  the  range, 
with  ample  time  to  meditate  as  they  rode,  considered 
the  case  of  the  boy  Garten,  the  murdered  woman,  the 
lean-faced,  stern,  unsmiling,  close-lipped  frontiersman 
on  his  lonely  vigils  in  the  mountains,  searching  with  in- 
domitable will  and  marvelous  patience  for  the  man  he 
meant  to  kilL  They  considered  and  voted  for  pro- 
hibition. 

Circumstantial  Evidence 

During  the  seventies  in  western  Kansas,  horse  steal- 
ing was  regarded  as  a  much  more  serious  crime  than 
just  ordinary  murder.  Of  course  the  killing  of  a  human 
being,  according  to  the  recognized  code  of  the  border, 
should  be  done  according  to  certain  well  recognized 
rules  of  fairness,  such  for  example,  as  that  both  the 
shooter  and  shootee  should  be  "heeled"  and  that  neither 
one  should  try  to  perforate  his  opponent  when  his  back 
was  turned.  There  were  certain  exceptions  to  this 
general  rule  as,  for  example,  when  either  party  an- 
nounced to  the  other  that  he  intended  to  shoot  him  on 
sight,  the  presumption  would  be  that  both  would  have 
their  "weapons"  handy  on  all  occasions  and  if  they 
failed  to  do  so  they  must  take  the  consequences.  In 
that  case  if  a  man  wasn't  "heeled"  it  was  clearly  his  own 
fault,  the  presumption  being  that  he  was,  and  that  the 


HAPPENINGS  IN  THE  SEVENTIES       77 

only  safe  way  for  the  other  man  was  to  commence 
shooting  as  soon  as  his  adversary  came  in  sight.  Even 
after  courts  had  been  established  for  several  years, 
although  the  cases  of  homicide  were  quite  numerous  the 
number  of  legal  convictions  was  decidedly  small. 

But  in  the  case  of  a  horse  thief — well,  that  was  dif- 
ferent. The  horse  was  about  the  only  means  of  con- 
veyance and  in  the  cattle  business  it  was  absolutely 
essential.  It  was  necessary,  too,  to  let  the  horses  run 
on  the  range  unguarded,  and  the  cattleman  reasoned 
that  unless  the  men  who  lusted  for  the  possession  of 
good  horses  were  restrained  by  the  fear  of  prompt  and 
violent  death,  no  man  would  be  sure  when  he  turned 
his  horses  out  at  night  that  he  would  be  able  to  gather 
any  of  them  in  the  morning.  In  the  short  and  sum- 
mary disposal  of  men  suspected  of  purloining  horse- 
flesh, the  well  established  rule  of  the  courts  that  a  man 
accused  of  a  crime  is  presumed  to  be  innocent  until 
proven  guilty,  was  reversed  and  the  accused  man  was 
presumed  to  be  guilty  unless  he  could  pretty  clearly 
establish  his  innocence.  Even  at  that,  it  is  probable 
that  considerably  more  than  half  of  the  men  hanged 
in  those  early  years  as  horse  thieves,  were  guilty  as 
charged. 

It  was  on  a  pleasant  day  in  the  summer  of  1876  that 
J.  B.  Boswell,  a  reputable  citizen  of  Russell,  Kansas, 
started  to  ride  over  into  Nebraska.  He  was  alone  and 
unarmed  and  rode  on  untroubled  by  premonitions  of 
impending  trouble.  He  rode  into  the  town  of  Creede, 
Nebraska,  when  he  was  suddenly  arrested,  charged  with 
being  a  horse  thief.  He  was  taken  before  the  mayor 
of  the  town,  which  was  already  incorporated,  and  there 
subjected  to  a  rigid  examination.  He  was  told  that 
there  had  been  some  horses  stolen  and  that  every 
stranger  was  under  suspicion,  but  they  would  give  him 
a  chance  to  prove  himself  innocent.  He  talked  as  per- 


78  WHEN  KANSAS  WAS  YOUNG 

suasively  as  he  knew  how,  but  the  examiners  seemed 
skeptical.  After  a  while  they  informed  him  that  they 
had  already  hung  one  horse  thief,  who  before  being 
swung  off  had  stated  that  there  was  a  Kansas  man 
implicated  with  him,  and  Boswell  unfortunately  was 
the  only  Kansas  man  they  had  rounded  up  so  far.  The 
presumption  was  therefore  against  him.  It  did  not 
seem  to  avail  him  anything  to  assure  them  earnestly 
and  vehemently  that  he  had  never  seen  this  horse  thief, 
did  not  know  him  either  by  sight  or  name  and  that 
he  was  peacefully  going  about  his  regular  business 
down  in  Kansas  when  the  horses  were  stolen.  The  im- 
promptu court  reasoned  that  it  had  the  dying  state- 
ment of  the  horse  thief  that  there  was  a  Kansas  man 
mixed  up  with  him  and — that  being  the  case — it  was  up 
to  Boswell  either  to  produce  the  Kansas  man  who  was 
guilty  or  to  admit  that  the  presumption  of  his  own 
guilt  was  strong. 

In  spite  of.  his  protests  and  argument  that  it  was 
absurd  to  convict  him  on  the  strength  of  the  state- 
ment of  a  horse  thief  about  to  die,  that  some  Kansas 
man  was  his  confederate,  they  cast  him  into  jail  and 
that  evening  about  nine  o'clock  some  twenty-five  men 
called  for  him  and  took  him  out  of  town  a  mile  or  two 
where  there  was  either  a  convenient  tree  or  possibly 
a  telegraph  pole.  He  afterward  confessed  that  he 
begged  piteously  for  his  life,  but  in  case  his  captors 
did  not  see  fit  to  grant  that,  he  asked  to  be  hung  from 
the  railroad  bridge  over  the  nearby  draw.  He  urged 
that  it  would  be  preferable  to  be  hanged  from  the 
bridge  because  the  fall  would  undoubtedly  break  his 
neck  and  save  him  the  torture  of  slow  strangulation. 
"For  God's  sake,  men,"  he  implored,  "hang  me  decent," 
which,  notwithstanding  its  violation  of  the  strict  rules 
of  grammar,  would  seem  to  be  an  entirely  reasonable 
request.  But  one  of  the  party  bent  on  swinging  him 


HAPPENINGS  IN  THE  SEVENTIES        79 

objected  to  this  concession  to  his  feeling,  saying  that 
"strangulation  was  good  enough  for  a  damned  Jay- 
hawker." 

However,  a  majority  of  the  party  thought  that  it 
would  only  be  fair  to  give  Boswell  two  or  three  minutes 
to  pray  if  he  wanted  it.  To  this  Boswell  replied  that 
he  didn't  see  that  it  would  do  him  any  particular  good 
to  pray,  and  anyway  he  was  not  in  practice,  but  that 
he  would  appreciate  it  if  they  would  allow  him  to  make 
a  will.  This  request  was  granted  and  he  drew  up  a 
brief  statement  of  how  he  wanted  his  property  disposed 
of,  asked  a  couple  of  members  to  witness  it,  and  then 
stated  that  he  was  ready.  Something  about  his  state- 
ments and  manner  seemed  to  impress  the  leader  of  the 
party  and  raised  a  doubt  in  his  mind  about  Boswell's 
guilt.  Turning  to  the  rest  of  the  men,  he  said,  "It's 
up  to  you  to  say  whether  we  swing  this  feller  or  not. 
Take  a  vote  on  it  and  if  you  vote  that  he  is  to  swing, 
he  swings."  It  seemed  that  Boswell  had  also  made 
an  impression  on  some  of  the  others  and  after  some 
argument  they  voted,  not  to  turn  him  loose,  but  to 
give  him  forty-eight  more  hours  to  prove  that  he  was 
innocent  and  not  the  man  referred  to  by  the  dead 
horse  thief.  Then  they  took  him  back  to  jail.  What 
changed  their  minds  Boswell  did  not  know,  but  greatly 
to  his  relief,  after  keeping  him  in  jail  a  couple  of 
days  they  let  him  go.  They  did  not  apologize  or  even 
tell  him  that  they  had  decided  he  was  not  the  man  they 
wanted,  but  as  they  let  him  go  free  he  did  not  care  to 
stand  on  little  matters  of  etiquette.  What  he  prin- 
cipally wanted  was  to  get  back  to  Kansas  as  soon  as 
possible. 

When  once  more  safe  among  his  neighbors,  he  re- 
lated his  experience  and  said  with  a  sigh,  as  he  wiped 
the  sweat  which  beaded  his  forehead  as  he  recalled  his 
experience,  "I  sure  had  a  hell  of  a  time."  And  even 


80  WHEN  KANSAS  WAS  YOUNG 

the  local  minister  who  listened  to  the  recital  admitted 
that  BoswelPs  statement  was  moderate  and  not  really 
tinged  with  profanity. 


The  First  Paper  m  Barber  County 

In  the  early  part  of  the  year  1878  a  man  by  the 
name  of  Cochran  concluded  that  there  was  a  field  for 
a  newspaper  in  the  frontier  town  of  Medicine  Lodge. 
He  purchased  a  Washington  hand  press  from  McElroy 
of  the  Humboldt  Union,  together  with  a  couple  of 
racks,  a  few  cases,  a  well  worn  font  of  long  primer 
type  and  another  font  of  brevier,  a  few  job  fonts  for 
advertising  purposes,  moved  the  outfit  to  Medicine 
and  commenced  the  publication  of  the  Barber  County 
Mail.  Possibly  Cochran  concluded  that  it  didn't  make 
much  difference  what  kind  of  a  paper  was  published  in 
that  kind  of  a  town,  or  possibly  he  didn't  know  how 
to  keep  the  worn  type  clean  and  a  decent  "impression" 
on  the  Washington  hand  press,  but  whatever  the  reason, 
the  fact  was  that  the  paper  was  generally  unreadable. 
Cochran  was  a  man  of  fair  ability  with  a  rather  catchy 
style  of  writing,  but  a  good  many  of  his  local  and 
editorial  observations  were  lost  because  it  was  impos- 
sible to  read  what  he  had  printed.  Whether  it  was  the 
poor  print  of  the  paper  or  the  flirtatious  disposition 
of  the  editor  that  caused  him  to  become  unpopular,  I 
am  unable  to  say,  but  the  fact  was  that  before  his 
first  year  in  the  town  had  expired  a  number  of  residents 
gathered  together  and  decided  that  he  must  depart 
thence  in  haste  and  with  a  promise  never  to  return. 

It  .was  also  decided  that  there  must  be  meted  out  to 
him  punishment  commensurate  with  his  offending,  and 
on  a  decidedly  cool  night  in  the  month  of  February, 
1879,  the  regulators  took  the  editor  from  his  humble 


HAPPENINGS  IN  THE  SEVENTIES        81 

office,  stripped  him  of  his  clothing  and  then  admin- 
istered a  punishment  which  I  think  was  entirely  unique 
and  unprecedented  in  the  treatment  of  editors.  There 
was  no  tar  in  the  town  and  not  a  feather  bed  to  be 
opened,  but  an  enterprising  settler  had  brought  in  a 
sorghum  molasses  mill  the  year  before  and  as  sorghum 
generally  grew  well  there,  had  manufactured  a  crop 
into  thick,  ropy  molasses.  Owing  to  the  cold  weather 
the  molasses  was  thicker  and  ropier  than  usual.  The 
regulators  secured  a  gallon  of  this,  mixed  it  well  with 
sandburs,  which  grew  with  great  luxuriance  in  the 
sandy  bottom  of  the  Medicine,  and  administered  this 
mixture  liberally  to  the  nude  person  of  the  editor.  I 
do  not  need  to  tell  my  readers  who  are  familiar  with 
the  nature  of  the  sandbur,  that  it  is  an  unpleasant 
vegetable  to  have  attached  to  one's  person.  Clothed 
with  this  unwelcome  covering  of  sandburs  and  sweet- 
ness, Cochrane  was  elevated  upon  a  cedar  rail  and 
carried  about  on  the  shoulders  of  the  self-appointed 
regulators.  He  privately  acknowledged  afterward  that 
while  this  was  an  elevation  and  distinction  such  as  no 
other  editor  perhaps  had  ever  received,  he  would  per- 
sonally rather  have  remained  a  private  and  humble 
citizen  on  foot.  After  carrying  the  shivering  and 
besmeared  editor  about  to  their  hearts'  content,  occa- 
sionally adding  to  his  general  discomfort  by  bouncing 
him  up  and  down  on  the  rough  and  splintered  corner  of 
the  rail,  the  regulators  told  him  that  he  must  leave 
town  within  twenty-four  hours,  and  never  show  his  face 
or  form  there  again. 

There  were  other  citizens  of  the  town,  among  them 
a  brother  of  mine,  who,  while  not  particularly  enamored 
with  Cochran  or  his  style  of  journalism,  felt  that  his 
morals  would  at  least  average  up  with  those  of  his 
persecutors.  They  also  organized,  armed  themselves 
with  such  weapons  as  were  convenient,  and  told  the 


82  WHEN  KANSAS  WAS  YOUNG 

editor  that  he  could  remain  as  long  as  he  wished  and 
they  would  be  responsible  for  his  safety.  Cochran  ex- 
pressed his  appreciation  of  their  kindness,  but  con- 
fessed to  them  that  the  atmosphere  of  the  town  did 
not  seem  salubrious  or  congenial  to  him  and  if  they 
would  arrange  to  purchase  his  paper  and  outfit  he 
would  seek  other  climes  where  it  was  not  the  habit 
to  decorate  editors  with  sandburs  and  sorghum  mo- 
lasses. His  proposition  was  accepted  by  my  brother 
and  his  brother-in-law,  E.  W.  Iliif ;  the  Barber  County 
Mail  slept  the  sleep  that  knows  no  waking  and  a  new 
paper,  the  Medicine  Lodge  Cresset,  was  born. 

The  name  Cresset  was  the  selection  of  Iliif,  who 
looked  the  typical  frontiersman,  but  was  really  a  lover 
of  good  literature  and  an  especial  admirer  of  Milton. 
Readers  of  "Paradise  Lost"  will  recall  the  vivid  descrip- 
tion of  Satan's  palace  which  was  lighted  by  "cressets." 
This  appealed  to  IlifFs  poetic  fancy  and  so  the  name, 
Medicine  Lodge  Cresset.  The  name  called  for  a  good 
deal  of  explanation.  Half  the  exchanges  persisted  for 
years  in  calling  it  the  Crescent,  apparently  laboring 
under  the  impression  that  some  followers  of  the  Sultan 
had  migrated  to  Kansas  and  gone  into  the  newspaper 
business.  There  was  also  some  considerable  curiosity 
among  the  readers  of  the  paper,  who  had  never  read 
the  blind  poet's  great  creation.  "What's  the  meanin' 
of  this  here  name  Cresset?"  asked  a  rough,  weather- 
beaten  cowboy,  who  ambled  one  day  into  the  office.  The 
origin  of  the  name  was  carefully  explained  to  him.  He 
mused  over  it  for  a  time,  then  looked  at  the  rather 
meager  and  not  very  handsome  paper,  and  exclaimed: 
"Damned  fittin'  name  I  would  say.  This  here  is  a  hell 
of  a  paper,  isn't  it?" 


HAPPENINGS  IN  THE  SEVENTIES        83 

The  Wonderful  Mirage 

The  following  thrilling  story  of  adventure  and  hair- 
raising  experience  is  related  by  Judge  William  R. 
Smith,  of  the  Atchison,  Topeka  &  Santa  Fe  railroad. 
Judge  Smith  modestly  insists  that  the  story  is  not  for 
publication,  but  I  can  not  permit  so  interesting  and 
verified  a  narrative  to  be  lost  to  the  reading  world. 
I  therefore  violate  his  confidence  and  give  you  the  story 
as  he  related  it  to  me: 

"The  spring  of  '79  will  always  be  memorable  for  the 
devastating  cyclones  which  started  in  Texas  and  moved 
north  through  the  Indian  Territory  into  western  Kansas. 
Not  one  alone  terrified  the  early  settlers  who  were  making 
their  homes  on  the  frontier,  but  a  succession  of  tornadoes 
moved  over  the  country  at  that  time,  leaving  destruction 
and  death  in  their  wake;  a  second  and  third  gleaning  what 
was  left  of  the  scanty  possessions  of  the  already  impover- 
ished people. 

"On  May  29,  of  that  year,  a  cyclone  of  unheard-of 
violence  traveled  over  the  Indian  Territory  on  its  way  to 
Kansas.  Dirty  Mud,  a  chief  of  the  Snake  Indians,  had 
four  of  his  wives  swept  from  his  side  while  they  were 
engaged  in  the  domestic  duty  of  preparing  the  intestines 
of  a  dog  for  their  husband's  dinner.  Dirty  Mud  was, 
however,  somewhat  consoled  after  this  sad  bereavement 
by  the  fact  that  he  had  three  wives  left,  who,  fortunately, 
were  chopping  wood  two  miles  distant  from  the  path  of  the 
storm.  This  consolation,  however,  was  brief,  for  with  an 
inhuman  mania  for  destruction,  this  same  cyclone,  after 
moving  forty  miles  north,  hesitated  on  its  deadly  journey, 
and  returning  the  next  day,  carried  the  three  remaining 
wives  of  Dirty  Mud  off  the  face  of  the  earth,  and  they 
were  seen  no  more.  Waiting  for  two  days  to  be  assured 
that  none  of  his  wives  would  descend,  Dirty  Mud  married 
again,  but  not  until  he  had  dug  a  cyclone  cellar  fourteen 
feet  deep  under  his  cabin,  into  which,  at  the  first  appear- 
ance of  a  dark  cloud,  he  let  down  his  second  batch  of  wives 
to  a  place  of  safety,  with  a  rope. 


84  WHEN  KANSAS  WAS  YOUNG 

"What  I  have  related  so  far  is  not  recorded  from  per- 
sonal observation.  I  come  now,  however,  to  an  experience 
in  which  I  played  a  thrilling  and  dangerous  part.  It  re- 
lates to  the  same  cyclone  which  so  greatly  disrupted  the 
domestic  relations  of  the  Snake  Indian  chief  and  brought 
profound  sorrow  into  a  family  happily  united.  I  was 
making  a  business  journey  on  horse-back  from  Sheridan 
Lake  to  Water  Valley,  two  towns  situated  about  five  miles 
over  the  Kansas  line  in  Colorado.  In  the  southwest  were 
gathering  clouds,  accompanied  by  gusts  of  wind  which 
greatly  agitated  the  sagebrush  and  cactus,  filling  the  air 
with  red  dust.  As  the  wind  grew  stronger,  a  cloud  blacker 
than  ink  approached  the  earth,  and  to  my  great  terror  as- 
sumed a  funnel-shaped  form,  leaving  no  doubt  that  a 
deadly  cyclone  was  close  at  hand.  My  horse,  now  spurred 
to  a  gallop,  his  ears  laid  back,  and  trembling  like  a  leaf, 
swept  past  hundreds  of  jack  rabbits,  which  were  running 
at  full  speed  in  their  efforts  to  escape.  Giving  a  backward 
glance,  I  saw  the  funnel-shaped  monster  whirling  in  its 
course,  tearing  up  all  vegetation  in  its  path  and  digging 
a  trench  two  feet  deep  in  the  dry  sand.  It  had  a  rotary 
motion,  which  in  the  brief  time  I  had  to  calculate,  I  es- 
timated at  300,000  revolutions  a  minute.  On  its  closer 
approach,  my  horse  became  violently  excited.  Leaping 
over  a  boulder,  he  looked  back,  increased  his  speed,  and 
snorting  with  fright,  threw  spray  from  both  his  nostrils 
to  a  distance  of  ten  feet.  There  was  no  escape.  The 
horrible  monster  would  swallow  us  in  an  instant  more.  I 
held  my  breath.  At  that  moment  the  whirling  cyclone 
sent  a  stone  against  the  horse's  ribs,  at  which  he  reared 
on  his  hind  legs,  made  a  violent  plunge  sidewise  and  threw 
me,  stunned  and  bleeding  to  the  ground.  This  saved  my 
life  and  that  of  the  horse. 

"I  was  thrown  twenty  feet  from  the  path  of  the  cyclone 
and  escaped  with  no  serious  injuries.  The  horse  did  not 
fare  so  well.  The  edge  of  the  whirling  cloud,  propelled 
with  irresistible  force,  and  revolving  like  a  buzz-saw,  struck 
the  animal  a  glancing  blow  and  passed  on  with  terrific  ve- 
locity to  the  north.  On  arising  to  my  feet  I  approached  the 
horse,  which  stood  perfectly  still  in  a  dazed  condition,  par- 


HAPPENINGS  IN  THE  SEVENTIES        85 

alyzed  with  fright.  On  examination  I  found  that  every  hair 
on  his  body  had  been  pulled  out  by  the  roots,  until  his  skin 
had  the  appearance  of  a  Mexican  dog.  Science  has  not  yet 
accounted  for  the  eccentric  freaks  of  a  cyclone  after  it  gets 
a  fair  start.  The  horse  then  began  to  shake  like  a  man 
with  the  ague,  swaying  from  side  to  side.  Cold  sweat 
streamed  from  his  body,  and  so  violent  were  the  vibrations 
of  his  head  that  every  tooth  in  his  mouth  rattled  to  the 
ground,  some  of  them  flying  off  to  a  distance  of  twenty 
feet.  He  did  not  long  survive  this  attack.  Surrounded 
with  succulent  grass  reaching  to  his  knees,  the  poor  animal 
starved  to  death  in  less  than  a  week.  After  his  death  it 
was  discovered  that  by  some  unknown  chemical  action  the 
horse's  hide  had  been  completely  tanned  and  was  soft  and 
pliable  enough  for  the  manufacture  of  the  finest  shoes. 

"Looking  in  the  distance  to  note  the  movements  of  the 
cyclone,  I  was  astonished  to  see  several  houses  and  a 
church  on  the  border  of  a  lake,  on  the  banks  of  which  were 
many  trees,  some  of  them  ten  feet  in  diameter  and  a  hun- 
dred feet  high.  Knowing  the  arid  condition  of  the  country, 
I  saw  at  once  that  the  unusual  manifestation  was  a  mirage. 
At  the  same  instant  the  cyclone  attacked  the  town,  the  lake, 
and  the  trees  with  tremendous  force.  It  started  with 
lightning  speed  and  moved  swifter  than  a  rush  telegram 
over  a  down-hill  wire.  It  looked  more  vicious  than  when 
it  passed  me  and  struck  the  horse.  Quicker  than  I  can  tell 
it,  the  funnel-shaped  cloud  of  ferocious  blackness  struck 
the  edge  of  the  lake.  Trees  of  the  size  described  appeared 
to  be  twisted  out  by  the  roots,  with  the  facility  with  which 
a  dentist  pulls  a  tooth.  Their  huge  trunks  disappeared, 
ground  to  a  pulp  in  an  instant.  After  the  trees  were  dis- 
posed of,  with  one  gulp  the  cyclone  swallowed  all  the  water 
in  the  lake,  leaving  its  bed  dry  and  sandy  as  a  brick  yard. 
Its  tentacles  were  next  thrown  around  the  church  steeple, 
carrying  it  away  without  disturbing  the  rest  of  the  build- 
ing. When  the  devastation  was  complete,  it  stopped  in 
its  course  as  if  hesitating  before  seeking  new  food  for 
its  voracious  maw.  This  pause  in  its  progress  led  me  to 
think  that  the  unsubstantial  impediment  to  the  devastating 
work  of  the  cyclone,  which  the  mirage  had  interposed,  had 


86  WHEN  KANSAS  WAS  YOUNG 

been  disappointing,  inasmuch  as  no  physical  force  could 
dissipate  or  destroy  this  optical  illusion.  I  was  forced  to 
smile  at  the  futile  attack  of  the  vicious  cyclone  on  the 
imaginary  village,  with  its  lake  and  trees,  which  disap- 
peared like  a  vision  when  the  black  monster  whirled  over 
the  place  where  it  seemed  to  have  a  site  and  fixed  location. 
No  sooner  had  the  cyclone  moved  on,  however,  than  the 
houses  reappeared,  the  trees  resumed  their  former  places 
and  the  lake  was  as  calm  and  peaceful  as  before. 

"I  have  never  heard  of  another  instance  where  a  mirage 
was  seen  to  come  into  collision  with  a  cyclone.  Inasmuch 
as  there  were  no  witnesses  who  can  attest  the  truth  of  what 
I  saw,  I  have  been  careful  to  avoid  exaggeration,  as  should 
be  done  in  all  cases  where  personal  experiences  of  a 
startling  nature  are  detailed,  in  the  absence  of  others  who 
may  vouch  for  their  accuracy." 


The  Last  Indian  Raid  m  Kansas 

On  Tuesday,  September  17,  1878,  a  horseman  rode 
down  the  valley  of  the  Medicine,  his  horse  covered  with 
foaming  sweat.  He  carried  the  news  that  there  had 
been  an  Indian  massacre  on  the  Salt  Fork  of  the 
Cimarron  River,  in  the  southwest  part  of  Comanche 
County,  in  which  two  persons  had  been  killed  outright, 
a  baby  mortally  and  two  other  persons  seriously 
wounded.  The  attack,  according  to  the  report  brought 
by  the  horseman,  had  been  made  at  Sheets'  cattle  camp 
near  the  state  line  by  a  party  of  Cheyennes  under  the 
command  of  a  daring  young  Cheyenne  chief,  called  Dull 
Knife.  The  Northern  Cheyennes  had  been  moved  from 
their  northern  hunting  grounds  against  their  will. 
They  cbafed  under  the  restrictions  of  the  agency  and 
the  young  warriors  plotted  to  go  back  to  the  land 
where  they  were  born  and  where  they  and  their  fathers 
had  hunted  for  many  generations.  There  has  been  an 
impression  that  the  entire  tribe  of  Northern  Cheyennes 


HAPPENINGS  IN  THE  SEVENTIES        87 

were  engaged  in  this  raid.  The  fact  is  that  not  more 
perhaps  than  a  hundred  of  the  young  warriors  fol- 
lowed Dull  Knife  in  his  journey  north. 

From  the  Sheets*  ranch  the  horseman  reported  that 
the  Indians  had  traveled  on  to  the  Payne  ranch.  Payne 
was  afterward  president  of  the  Comanche  pool  and  was 
killed  by  bank  robbers  at  Medicine  Lodge  in  the  spring 
of  1883.  The  rider  went  on  to  say  that  Payne  had 
been  shot  in  the  neck,  Mrs.  Payne  had  been  shot  in 
the  thigh,  and  their  baby  had  been  shot  through  the 
breast.  Tom  Murray,  a  cattle  herder,  had  been  caught 
out  alone  and,  true  to  his  race  and  name,  he  had  died 
fighting.  It  may  not  be  out  of  place  here  to  publish 
the  following  brief  but  touching  tribute  to  the  lone 
Irish  herder,  written  by  Captain  Byron  P.  Ayers,  of 
whom  I  have  made  former  mention,  which  was  published 
subsequently  in  the  Barber  County  Mail:  "In  your 
paper  last  week  you  told  that  Tom  Murray  was  dead. 
The  boys  who  knew  him  have  asked  me  to  say  something 
about  him  and  have  you  print  it.  I  do  not  know  what 
to  say,  except  that  he  was  a  good  man,  always  sober, 
told  the  truth,  loved  children,  and  revered  women.  He 
died  fighting  bravely  to  the  last." 

I  have  always  considered  that  as  fine  and  compre- 
hensive a  tribute  as  I  have  ever  read.  A  few  hours 
after  the  report  of  the  massacres  reached  Medicine 
Lodge,  forty  or  fifty  determined,  well  armed  men  were 
mounted  and  on  the  way  to  intercept  the  savages. 
They  were  not  trained  soldiers,  but  I  question  if  a 
nervier  set  of  fighters  ever  rode  out  to  battle.  I  have 
some  personal  pride  in  the  expedition  because  a  brother 
of  mine  rode  with  them,  a  young  and  stalwart  man, 
quiet,  cool,  never  given  to  boasting,  never  reckless,  but 
who,  had  he  been  given  command  of  a  forlorn  hope, 
would,  I  am  certain,  have  ridden  to  the  death  as  coolly 
as  rode  the  troopers  of  the  "Six  Hundred"  at  the  fatal 


88  WHEN  KANSAS  WAS  YOUNG 

charge  of  Balaclava.  His  body  lies  in  an  Oklahoma 
burying  ground,  and  I  trust  I  may  be  excused  for  in- 
serting this  tribute  to  his  memory. 

Some  forty  miles  south  of  Dodge  City  the  Barber 
County  scouts  joined  a  force  of  United  States  regulars 
and  the  combined  force  succeeded  in  intercepting  Dull 
Knife  and  his  band.  They,  in  fact,  practically  sur- 
rounded the  Indians  in  a  canyon  in  what  is  now  Clark 
County.  The  regulars  and  scouts  together  consider- 
ably outnumbered  the  Indians  and  might  have  either 
captured  them  or  exterminated  them.  The  scouts, 
however,  had  put  themselves  under  command  of  the 
United  States  regular  officer  in  command  of  the  troops 
and  he  refused  to  attack.  They  asked  to  be  per- 
mitted to  attack,  trying  to  convince  the  officer  in  com- 
mand that  while  an  attack  might  mean  the  loss  of  a 
few  men  they  certainly  could  stop  the  further  progress 
of  the  Indians.  The  officer  refused,  threw  out  pickets, 
and  ordered  that  no  attack  be  made  until  the  next 
morning.  Under  cover  of  darkness  the  wily  savages 
slipped  away,  and  when  the  morning  came  the  regu- 
lars and  scouts  found  they  were  guarding  an  empty 
canyon.  The  scouts  were  humiliated  and  disgusted 
and  always  regarded  the  regular  officer  in  command  of 
the  troops  as  a  coward,  who  was  responsible  for  the 
trail  of  blood  and  fire  afterward  made  by  Dull  Knife 
and  his  band  before  they  were  finally  captured. 

They  had  entered  at  the  southwest  corner  of  what 
is  now  Comanche  County  and  crossing  the  state  came 
out  of  it  on  the  north  line  of  Decatur  County.  The 
number  of  persons  murdered  by  them  in  Kansas  was 
variously  estimated  at  from  seventy-five  to  one  hun- 
dred. The  failure  of  the  regulars  to  stop  them  before 
they  had  done  any  considerable  amount  of  damage 
called  forth  this  editorial  reference  from  the  Medicine 
Lodge  editor  in  his  paper  of  October  17,  1878 : 


HAPPENINGS  IN  THE  SEVENTIES        89 

"Poor  Lo  has  outgeneraled  the  U.  S.  troops  and 
Dull  Knife  has  shown  himself  entitled  to  a  name  among 
the  great  warriors  of  the  red  braves." 

The  band  was  finally  captured  in  Nebraska.  Some 
of  them  were  killed  before  the  capture  and  Dull  Knife 
and  a  number  of  other  warriors  were  put  in  jail.  My 
recollection  is  that  none  of  these  were  finally  executed 
for  their  crimes.  It  is  not  at  all  improbable  that  even 
yet  there  is  preserved  in  some  Cheyenne  teepee  a  scalp 
lock  or  two  gathered  on  that  the  last  Indian  raid 
through  Kansas. 

For  several  years  after,  the  border  was  troubled 
with  a  fear  of  another  outbreak  and  during  the  ad- 
ministration of  Governor  St.  John  a  border  patrol  was 
established,  an  organization  something  after  the 
fashion  of  the  Texas  rangers.  A  few  well  armed  and 
well  mounted  men  rode  the  southern  line  of  Kansas 
from  the  Cowley  County  border  to  the  Colorado  line, 
but  there  was  no  other  Indian  chief  with  the  daring 
and  organizing  ability  of  Dull  Knife  to  lead  the  young 
braves  on  another  expedition  of  pillage  and  massacre. 


The  Hillman  Case 

It  was  in  the  last  days  of  March,  1879,  when  I 
reached  Medicine  Lodge  after  a  long,  windy  and  weari- 
some trip  from  Wichita  in  a  freight  wagon.  I  had  not 
been  notified  that  there  had  been  a  change  of  owner- 
ship in  the  frontier  newspaper,  and  I  may  say  in  pass- 
ing that  when  I  started  west  I  had  no  idea  that  I  was 
to  be  a  newspaper  man.  In  fact  I  had  never  up  to 
that  time  been  inside  a  newspaper  office  or  seen  a 
type. 

When  I  entered  the  Cresset  office  on  that  windy 
March  day,  Iliff  was  seated  at  a  pine  table.  In  front 


90  WHEN  KANSAS  WAS  YOUNG 

of  him  lay  his  "45"  revolver,  fully  loaded.  He  filled 
my  imagination  of  what  "Jim  Bludso"  of  the  "Arizona 
Kicker"  ought  to  look  like.  His  hair,  black  and  coarse 
as  that  of  an  Indian,  fell  down  over  his  collar.  His 
eyes,  black  and  flashing,  looked  out  from  under  beetling 
brows  with  hairs  stiff  and  wiry  and  as  long  as  the 
ordinary  mustache.  His  dress  was  in  keeping  with  his 
appearance.  Around  his  neck  was  a  red  bandana  hand- 
kerchief. His  dark  gray  woolen  shirt,  flaring  open 
slightly  at  the  throat,  revealed  in  part  the  muscular 
neck  and  hirsute  breast.  He  wore  the  leather  "chaps" 
common  to  the  cow  men  of  that  day  and  his  pants, 
stuffed  in  his  boots,  were  held  in  place  by  a  belt  well 
filled  with  loaded  cartridges.  A  woven  rawhide  quirt 
hung  from  his  left  wrist.  The  heels  of  his  boots  were 
ornamented  with  savage-looking  spurs.  He  was  booted 
and  spurred  and  ready  to  ride.  But  he  was  not  just 
then  thinking  of  the  range.  He  was  engaged  in  writ- 
ing a  most  vigorous  editorial,  as  I  recall,  on  the  Hill- 
man  case. 

A  couple  of  weeks  before  that  time  there  had  been 
a  tragedy  up  on  Spring  Creek,  fourteen  miles  north- 
west of  Medicine  Lodge,  and  a  country  justice,  George 
Washington  Paddock,  acting  as  coroner,  had  held  in- 
quest over  the  supposedly  dead  body  of  John  W.  Hill- 
man.  Hillman,  a  farm  laborer  of  Douglas  County, 
had,  at  the  instance  of  one  Levy  Baldwin,  taken  out 
life  insurance  in  various  companies  to  the  extent  of 
$25,000  in  the  aggregate.  No  cash  had  been  paid,  as 
I  now  recall,  for  the  initial  premiums  on  the  policies. 
Notes,  I  think,  indorsed  by  Levy  Baldwin  had  been 
accepted  by  the  agents.  That  a  man  in  Hillman's 
financial  circumstances  should  take  out  so  much  in- 
surance on  his  life,  was  to  say  the  least,  remarkable, 
for  in  those  days  the  farm  laborer  was  not  paid  large 
wages  and  the  annual  premiums  on  that  amount  of  in- 


HAPPENINGS  IN  THE  SEVENTIES        91 

surance  would  equal  the  probable  earnings  of  a  man 
like  Hillman. 

A  man  by  the  name  of  Brown  reported  the  killing 
of  Hillman.  He  said  that  in  drawing  a  gun  out  of  the 
wagon  it  was  accidentally  discharged,  the  bullet  strik- 
ing Hillman  behind  the  ear  and  passing  through  his 
brain.  The  verdict  of  the  coroner's  jury  was  based  on 
these  supposed  facts.  The  body  was  buried  at  Medicine 
Lodge.  I  think  his  wife  did  not  come  to  the  funeral, 
and  altogether  there  seemed  to  be  a  rather  remarkable 
indifference  displayed  on  the  part  of  his  relatives  and 
friends.  Ten  days  afterward  a  representative  of  one 
of  the  insurance  companies  arrived  at  Medicine  Lodge 
and  had  the  body  exhumed  and  shipped  to  Lawrence  for 
identification.  Then  commenced  one  of  the  most  cele- 
brated cases  in  the  history  of  life  insurance. 

The  claim  of  the  insurance  companies  was  that  the 
whole  thing  was  a  conspiracy  concocted  by  Baldwin 
and  Hillman  to  defraud  the  insurance  companies  out  of 
$25,000.  They  declared  that  a  victim  by  the  name  of 
Walters  had  been  employed  by  Baldwin  and  Hillman 
to  accompany  Hillman  and  Brown  down  to  Barber 
County,  where  Walters  was  to  be  murdered  and  his 
body  buried  for  that  of  Hillman,  while  Hillman,  of 
course,  was  to  disappear.  Some  months  after  the  kill- 
ing Brown  made  a  confession,  in  which  he  declared  that 
his  first  statement  to  the  coroner's  jury  was  false; 
that,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  Walters  had  been  murdered 
by  Hillman  at  the  camp,  after  which  Hillman  had  dis- 
appeared and  Walters'  body  had  been  buried  in  his 
place. 

The  attorneys  for  Mrs.  Hillman  produced  several 
reputable  witnesses  in  Medicine  Lodge,  who  declared 
that  Hillman  had  visited  the  Lodge  several  weeks  before 
the  killing,  and  was  detained  there  during  a  storm  which 
lasted  several  days.  These  witnesses  declared  that  the 


92  WHEN  KANSAS  WAS  YOUNG 

man  who  visited  the  Lodge  on  the  prior  occasion  and 
the  man  who  was  shot  were  one  and  the  same.  Know- 
ing these  men  well,  I  can  not  doubt  their  honesty, 
and  it  is  hard  to  believe  that  they  were  mistaken. 
Pictures  of  the  missing  man,  Walters,  and  of  Hillman 
did  not  show  any  marked  resemblance  between  the  two. 
On  the  other  hand,  the  circumstances  were  exceedingly 
suspicious,  the  taking  out  of  a  $25,000  life  insurance 
by  a  common  laborer,  the  burial  of  the  body  in  an 
unmarked  grave,  with  apparently  no  intention  of  re- 
moving it  to  his  home  at  Lawrence,  the  giving  of  notes 
instead  of  cash  for  the  payment  of  the  first  premiums 
on  the  policies,  the  confession  of  Brown,  all  tended  to 
make  a  strong  prima  facie  case  for  the  insurance  com- 
panies. 

For  a  quarter  of  a  century  the  case  dragged  its  way 
through  the  courts,  up  to  the  supreme  court  of  the 
United  States  and  back  again  and  again  to  the  supreme 
court.  Some  of  the  ablest  lawyers  not  only  of  Kansas, 
but  of  other  states  were  engaged  on  one  side  or  the 
other.  Finally  the  case  got  into  state  politics,  when 
Webb  McNall,  insurance  commissioner  under  Governor 
Leedy,  ordered  the  New  York  Life  to  pay  the  Hill- 
man policy  or  get  out  of  the  state.  The  cases  were 
finally  compromised,  the  companies  concluding  that  it 
was  better  to  pay  what  they  considered  a  wrongful 
claim  than  to  fight  the  matter  longer.  If  Hillman  was 
not  killed,  he  was  never  heard  from  again ;  if  the  man 
who  was  killed  was  not  Walters  then  there  was  another 
remarkable  disappearance.  I  have  little  doubt  that 
taking  out  the  policies  of  insurance  was  part  of  a  con- 
spiracy to  defraud  the  insurance  companies,  but  I  have 
thought  there  was  a  failure  of  the  plan,  at  least  so  far 
as  Hillman  was  concerned,  and  that  he  was  really 
killed  at  the  lonesome  camp  on  Spring  Creek. 


PICTURESQUE    FIGURES 

A  Frontier  Surveyor 

WHEN  I  arrived  at  Medicine  Lodge  I  found  the 
principal  surveyor  a  hunchback  by  the  name 
of  George  Wise.  Wise  was  the  owner  of  a 
surveyor's  tripod,  transit,  surveyor's  chain,  and  a 
diminutive  donkey.  When  Wise  and  his  surveyor's 
outfit  were  loaded  on  the  back  of  the  donkey  the  top 
of  his  cowboy  hat  hardly  rose  above  the  points  of  the 
donkey's  ears.  Whether  Wise  knew  anything  worth 
mentioning  about  the  science  of  surveying  is  a  question, 
but  he  was  in  some  ways  the  most  accommodating  sur- 
veyor who  ever  sighted  over  a  transit. 

He  was  frequently  employed  by  cattlemen  who  took 
up  claims  with  the  idea  of  controlling  as  much  running 
water  as  possible.  Wise  operated  on  the  theory  that 
the  business  of  surveying  was  not  to  try  to  find  the 
government  corners  and  establish  lines  in  accordance 
therewith,  but  to  establish  corners  and  lines  that  would 
suit  the  wishes  and  convenience  of  the  party  who  em- 
ployed him  to  do  the  surveying.  It  was  said  to  be 
quite  customary  with  him  when  he  had  unloaded  his 
tripod  and  transit  from  the  back  of  the  donkey  to 
ask  in  his  high-pitched,  thin  voice,  "Well,  where  the 

do  you  want  these  corners  located?"     I  was 

talking  with  a  resident  of  Barber  County  only  a  few 
days  ago  and  was  told  that  corner  stones  can  still  be 
found  down  there  which  have,  apparently,  been  located 
without  any  reference  to  the  government  survey.  I 


94  WHEN  KANSAS  WAS  YOUNG 

have  no  doubt  they  were  located  by  Wise,  the  hunch- 
back. 

Like  many  men  suffering  from  a  permanent  affliction 
that  causes  a  physical  deformity,  Wise  was  a  man  of 
irascible  temper,  easily  irritated  and  petulant.  He 
always  affected  the  cowboy  dress  and  carried  with 
pride  a  number  "44"  revolver,  a  huge  gun  which  seemed 
larger  on  account  of  the  diminutive  stature  of  the  man 
who  carried  it.  When  Wise  could  get  a  crowd  to  listen 
to  him,  he  liked  to  talk  of  his  prowess  and  achieve- 
ments. 

One  day  he  commenced  a  narrative  of  which  he  was 
particularly  proud.  When  he  commenced  there  was 
quite  a  large  and  apparently  deeply  interested  audi- 
ence, but  he  had  only  got  fairly  started  when  the 
hearers  commenced  to  drop  out,  just  casually,  as 
though  they  had  lost  interest  or  happened  to  think 
of  something  somewhere  else.  Wise  was  so  deeply  in- 
terested in  his  own  narration  that  he  didn't  note  the 
gradual  thinning  out  of  the  crowd  until,  happening 
to  turn  his  head,  he  observed  that  there  was  only 
one  man  left,  a  stranger  who  had  just  come  in  to  look 
at  the  country  and  was  sitting  in  the  drug  store  where 
Wise  was  telling  his  story  and  in  the  corner  where 
he  could  not  well  get  away.  It  probably  had  not  oc- 
curred to  him  to  go  away,  as  he  had  not  been  let  in 
on  the  job  that  was  being  put  on  the  peppery  little 
hunchback  and  was  listening  to  the  story  with  polite 
and  apparently  interested  attention.  When  Wise  saw 
that  the  crowd  had  deliberately  walked  out  on  him  it 
filled  him  with  rage.  To  the  astonishment  and  possibly 
somewhat  to  the  alarm  of  the  polite  stranger  the  hunch- 
back suddenly  pulled  his  gun  out  of  its  holster  and, 
pointing  it  at  the  lone  auditor,  his  shrill  voice  shaking 
with  anger,  he  yelled:  "Don't  you  move,  damn  you. 
You're  goin'  to  listen  till  I  get  through." 


PICTURESQUE  FIGURES  95 

It  is  hardly  necessary  to  remark  that  the  stranger 
did. 

Wise  was  at  this  time  a  middle-aged  man  but  had 
never  married.  There  came  as  a  cook  in  one  of  the 
frontier  restaurants  a  robust  female  who  for  some 
inscrutable  reason  began  to  "cotton"  to  the  hunch- 
back surveyor.  She  must  have  impressed  him  with  her 
heft  as  she  was  not  a  damsel  fair  to  look  upon.  She 
was  built,  however,  in  a  way  to  rival  the  behemoth  of 
Holy  Writ.  The  courtship  was  short  and  ardent  and 
when  the  knot  was  tied,  apparently  both  were  supremely 
satisfied.  A  more  strangely  assorted  couple  was 
perhaps  never  seen.  The  bride  stood,  I  should  say, 
about  six  feet  in  her  stocking  feet  and  would  weigh 
around  two  hundred  and  twenty-five,  while  the  groom 
stood  about  five  feet  and  would  weigh  perhaps  a 
hundred  net.  When  they  walked  out  together  she 
towered  above  her  diminutive  spouse  like  one  of  the 
Ringling  elephants  above  his  keeper.  Before  the  honey- 
moon was  ended,  however,  the  town  jokers  began  de- 
liberately to  fan  the  flame  of  jealousy  in  the  heart  of 
the  hunchback.  One  after  another  came  to  him  with 
tales  of  cowboys  who  were  trying  to  make  love  to  his 
wife.  The  tale  bearers  told  him  that  these  men  were 
sore  on  him  because  he  had  "cut  them  out"  and  that 
they  were  trying  now  to  alienate  the  affections  of  his 
matrimonial  partner.  They  told  him  that  while  the 
fact  that  he  was  able  to  win  this  fair  maid  away  from 
all  these  other  suitors  showed  that  he  was  some  ladies' 
man,  there  was  no  telling  what  devilment  these  dis- 
appointed men  would  try  to  put  into  her  head  when 
he  wasn't  watching.  The  trouble  makers  succeeded 
even  better  than  they  had  hoped,  and  watched  the  green 
eyed  monster  take  possession  of  the  hunchback  sur- 
veyor with  unholy  joy.  A  time  came,  however,  when 
there  was  a  possibility  that  the  joke  might  result  in 


96  WHEN  KANSAS  WAS  YOUNG 

a  tragedy.  A  dance  was  being  held  in  the  restaurant, 
which  had  been  cleared  of  tables  and  counters  for  that 
purpose,  and  the  frontier  fiddler  was  droning  out  his 
invariable  opening  call  to  the  "sets"  formed  for  the 
quadrille,  "Jine  hands  and  circle  to  the  left"  when  a 
weazened  figure,  his  eyes  blazing  with  wrath  and  his 
gun  in  hand,  came  raging  down  the  center  of  the 
room.  It  was  "Humpy  Wise."  One  of  his  supposed 
rivals  had  invited  Mrs.  Wise  to  dance.  Wise  pro- 
posed to  stop  proceedings.  There  was  to  be  no  "On 
with  the  dance,  let  joy  be  unconfined"  so  far  as  he  was 
concerned,  and  incidentally  it  may  be  remarked  that 
proceedings  did  stop  for  the  time  being.  As  one  of 
the  cowboys  remarked,  "The  durned  little  crook- 
backed  son-of-a-gun  might  let  that  gun  go  off.  You 
can't  always  tell." 

Frontier  Barbers 

When  I  arrived  in  Medicine  Lodge,  after  a  long, 
wearisome,  and  dusty  trip  on  a  freight  wagon,  I  needed 
the  ministrations  of  a  barber.  I  asked  if  the  town 
supported  a  tonsorial  artist,  and  was  told  if  I  meant 
by  those  words  to  describe  a  party  who  shaved  people 
and  cut  their  hair,  and  the  like,  that  the  town  did. 
They  said  I  would  find  the  town  barber  at  the  livery 
stable.  I  assumed  that  they  meant  that,  during  a 
temporary  lull  in  the  rush  of  business,  he  was  loafing 
about  the  livery  stable,  but  that  was  a  mistake.  I 
went  to  the  stable  and  saw  a  man  of  vigorous  frame 
acting  as  chamber  maid  for  a  number  of  raucous- 
voiced  mules  and  partially  civilized  bronchos.  I  in- 
quired if  he  had  seen  the  town  barber. 

"You  are  looking  at  him  right  now,"  he  replied,  as 
he  leaned  the  fork  up  against  the  side  of  the  stable 
and  rubbed  his  hands  on  his  overalls. 


PICTURESQUE  FIGURES  97 

"Where  is  your  shop  ?" 

"Right  in  there,  stranger,"  pointing  to  a  small  room 
boarded  off  at  one  corner  of  the  stable. 

There  were  two  ordinary  chairs  in  the  room  and  I 
sat  down  on  one  of  them.  The  barber  mixed  up  a  half 
pint  or  so  of  lather  in  an  ancient-appearing  cup,  took 
a  razor  from  a  shelf  and  stropped  it  on  his  bootleg, 
drew  up  a  chair  behind  the  one  on  which  I  was  sitting, 
put  one  foot  up  on  this  chair  and  bent  my  head  back 
over  his  knee  until  my  neck  described  a  parabola  and 
my  Adam's  apple  jutted  up  into  the  air  like  a  lowly 
mound.  The  barber  distributed  lather  over  my 
countenance  with  lavish  and  indiscriminate  brush.  I 
inadvertently  started  to  open  my  mouth  to  protest  and 
received  a  spoonful  or  such  a  matter.  My  recollection 
is,  however,  that,  barring  the  fact  that  it  was  mixed 
with  mule  hair  after  the  manner  in  which  hair  is  mixed 
with  lime  in  making  mortar,  it  was  not  different  either 
in  taste  or  consistency  from  other  lather  I  have  sampled 
during  the  fleeting  years. 

By  the  time  the  job  of  amputating  my  whiskers  was 
finished,  I  felt  that  I  probably  had  permanent  curva- 
ture of  the  spine,  but  youth  is  resilient;  my  head 
snapped  back  into  place  and  there  was  no  subsequent 
ill  effect.  After  the  whisker  amputation  was  completed, 
the  barber  wiped  my  countenance  with  a  sponge  which 
smelled  as  if  it  had  been  used  in  completing  the  toilet 
of  the  mules;  anointed  my  jaws  with  Mustang  liniment 
and  informed  me  that  my  bill  was  fifteen  cents.  I  had 
been  accustomed  to  ten  cents  for  a  shave  and,  in- 
fluenced by  the  place  and  service,  was  inclined  to  kick 
and  neigh,  but  came  across.  The  barber  informed  me 
that  there  was  really  nothing  in  the  barber  business 
in  that  town,  and  that  he  had  about  decided  to  quit. 
He  left  shortly  afterward. 

In  a  few  weeks  a  man  came  to  town,  saying  that  he 


98  WHEN  KANSAS  WAS  YOUNG 

had  heard  Medicine  Lodge  needed  a  barber  shop  and 
he  thought  there  might  be  an  opening.  The  valor  of 
ignorance  is  remarkable.  I  have  often  wondered  since 
that  the  inhabitants  of  a  frontier  town  like  Medicine 
Lodge,  where  they  were  supposed  to  shoot  on  slight 
provocation,  permitted  that  man  to  practice  on  their 
faces  and  get  away  alive.  He  had  no  barber  chair, 
but  employed  a  local  carpenter  to  make  him  one.  If 
the  carpenter  had  ever  seen  a  barber  chair,  there  was 
nothing  about  his  handiwork  to  indicate  it.  The  chair 
was  entirely  rigid.  When  the  victim  was  once  seated, 
there  was  no  chance  for  him  to  shift  his  position  to 
mitigate  the  agony.  This  second  alleged  barber  was 
an  earnest  soul.  I  will  say  for  him  that  he  took  his 
work  more  seriously  than  almost  any  man  I  ever  knew. 
He  had  a  curious  habit  when  shaving  you  of  running 
out  his  tongue  as  some  men  do  who  find  writing  a  most 
laborious  and  serious  matter. 

This  habit  of  his  had  one  thing  to  recommend  it.  I 
used  to  become  so  much  interested  in  watching  his  lin- 
gual contortions  that  I  forgot  the  torture  of  the  razor. 
I  had  never  supposed  before  that  the  human  tongue 
could  express  by  silent  movement  the  varied  emotions 
of  the  man  to  whom  it  belonged.  When  the  razor  was 
operating  in  proximity  to  the  jugular,  the  barber's 
tongue  seemed  to  contract  to  about  the  size  and  ap- 
pearance of  a  carpenter's  red  keel  pencil.  It  would 
quiver  and  sometimes  perform  a  rapid  spiral  motion. 
This  indicated  mental  excitement  and  apprehension. 
When,  however,  the  razor  was  pulling  steadily  up  and 
down  the  cheek,  the  barber's  tongue  would  drape  itself 
languidly  and  peacefully  over  his  lower  lip. 

The  only  explanation  I  can  see  for  that  barber's  im- 
munity from  assassination  at  the  hands  of  some  muti- 
lated customer  was  his  earnestness  and  effort  to  please. 
One  day  a  customer  by  the  name  of  Van  Slyke  endured 


PICTURESQUE  FIGURES  99 

the  amputation  of  his  beard  with  remarkable  patience 
for  half  or  three-quarters  of  an  hour.  By  that  time 
the  barber  had  gotten  over  all  of  Van's  face  except  his 
upper  lip.  "Would  you  like  to  have  your  upper  lip 
shaved?"  he  asked. 

"No,"  patiently  replied  Van  Slyke.  "For  awhile 
after  I  got  into  the  chair  I  thought  I  would  just  let 
you  pull  out  all  the  whiskers  and  save  me  from  any 
further  expense  for  shaving,  but  I  have  changed  my 
mind.  I  am  going  to  save  what  are  left  just  to  show 
these  guys  around  here  that  I  can  raise  hair  on  my 
face  if  I  want  to." 


"Windy  Smith19  and  "Tiger  Jack" 

There  is  something  about  the  frontier  that  seems  to 
attract  to  it  more  varied  and  peculiar  kinds  of  individ- 
uals than  can  be  found  elsewhere.  These  peculiar  types 
were  interesting  to  me  and  may  be  to  such  as  take 
the  time  and  trouble  to  read  this  series  of  stories  of 
early  western  Kansas  life  and  times. 

Among  the  peculiar  individuals  who  attracted  my 
attention  was  one  known  as  "Windy  Smith."  Smith's 
job  was  to  transport  the  mail  twice  a  week  from 
Medicine  Lodge  to  a  couple  of  postoffices  which  had 
been  established  in  southwest  Barber  and  southeast 
Comanche  Counties  for  the  benefit  of  the  ranchmen 
who  pastured  their  cattle  in  that  locality.  The  mail 
was  carried  on  a  somewhat  ancient  and  discouraged 
appearing,  sway-backed,  dun-colored  mule.  The  mule 
was  the  property  of  "Windy  Smith,"  but  probably 
was  somewhat  encumbered  by  a  chattel  mortgage. 

As  I  was  young  and  unmarried,  I  frequently  stayed 
in  the  newspaper  office  evenings  and  after  Smith  had 
delivered  the  mail  and  cared  for  his  mule,  he  got  in  the 


100  WHEN  KANSAS  WAS  YOUNG 

habit  of  coming  to  the  office  to  loaf.  On  about  the  first 
of  these  occasions  he  told  me  that  he  was  from  Virginia 
and  owned,  as  I  recall,  a  quarter  section  of  land  there. 
He  found  me,  as  he  supposed,  an  interested  listener. 
He  did  not  often  find  that  kind  of  listeners.  The  men 
who  knew  him  were  apt  to  find  some  excuse  to  go  some- 
where else  when  he  commenced  to  talk,  but  I  listened 
well  and  it  warmed  the  cockles  of  his  heart.  The  next 
time  he  came  to  the  office  his  land  holdings  had  in- 
creased to  a  section.  I  did  not  call  attention  to  the 
discrepancy.  He  probably  thought  I  had  forgotten 
what  he  had  told  me  the  last  time,  or  maybe  he  had  for- 
gotten himself.  I  was  still  a  good  listener  and  that 
fact  won  me  favor  in  his  eyes.  At  the  next  evening 
session  I  noted  that  he  had  increased  his  acreage  to 
two  sections,  but  still  I  seemed  interested  and  credulous. 
As  a  matter  of  fact,  I  was  becoming  interested.  I  was 
curious  to  know  just  how  far  his  imagination  would 
expand. 

From  that  time  on  the  imaginary  holdings  of 
"Windy  Smith"  increased  faster  than  Falstaff  s  "men 
in  buckram."  In  a  couple  of  weeks  he  assured  me  un- 
blushingly  that  he  was  the  owner  of  20,000  acres  of 
Virginia  land  and  in  a  month  his  possessions  amounted 
to  more  than  40,000  acres.  After  an  hour  of  this  sort 
of  pipe  dreaming  he  would  go  away  to  seek  repose  in 
the  hay  loft  of  the  stable  that  sheltered  his  sway- 
backed  dun  mule,  and  the  next  morning  would  ride  out 
of  town  on  his  long  and  lonesome  journey  across  the  al- 
most uninhabited  cattle  ranges.  I  never  had  the  heart 
either  to  call  attention  to  his  differences  of  statement 
or  to  express  a  doubt  as  to  their  accuracy.  These  lies 
were  really  his  only  recreation.  They  did  no  harm  so 
far  as  I  could  discover.  While  he  was  telling  them 
the  old  mail  carrier  lived  in  imagination  surrounded 
by  fabulous  wealth,  the  master  of  vast  possessions.  Of 


PICTURESQUE  FIGURES  101 

course  after  it  was  over  he  had  to  get  down  to  the 
sordid  realities  of  life — a  bed  in  a  hay  mow,  a  salary 
of  perhaps  $40  per  month  out  of  which  had  to  be  paid 
the  keep  of  the  sway-backed  dun  mule — but  for  a  little 
while  he  was  a  Croesus  in  his  mind,  and  as  an  appar- 
ently credulous  and  interested  listener  I  contributed 
to  his  temporary  happiness. 

In  the  Medicine  valley  some  three  or  four  miles  south 
of  Medicine  Lodge  lived  John  Sparks,  commonly  known 
as  "Tiger  Jack."  The  fact  was  that  Sparks  was  one 
of  the  most  harmless  of  men,  but,  like  "Windy  Smith," 
gifted  with  a  marvelous  imagination.  I  think  living 
in  comparative  solitude,  as  the  early  settlers  did,  was 
calculated  to  develop  the  imagination.  "Tiger  Jack's" 
imagination  did  not  run  to  vast  possessions,  but  to 
personal  prowess  and  daring.  It  seemed  to  me  that  a 
great  many  of  these  peculiar  characters  drifted  into 
my  office  and  unloaded  on  me  the  product  of  their 
imaginations.  Sparks  used  up  several  hours  of  my 
time  in  this  way.  He  told  me  that  when  the  buffalo 
were  plentiful  he  was  by  all  odds  the  most  skilled  and 
successful  hunter  that  there  was  on  the  plains.  I  asked 
him  if  he  had  ever  been  in  any  close  places  while  hunt- 
ing. He  assured  me  that  he  had.  He  said  his  closest 
call  was  one  day  when  he  got  caught  in  a  vast  herd 
of  stampeded  buffalo.  He  was  riding  a  small  pony  and 
saw  that  he  was  liable  to  be  run  over  and  trampled  to 
death.  Or  if  he  kept  up  with  the  herd  he  saw  that  the 
buffalo  were  heading  for  a  high  bluff  and  that  if  he  and 
his  pony  were  forced  over  it  was  sure  death.  But  his 
presence  of  mind  did  not  desert  him.  He  jumped  from 
the  back  of  his  pony  on  to  the  back  of  the  nearest 
buffalo  and  from  the  back  of  that  buffalo  on  to  the 
back  of  another  and  then  on  to  another  until  he  finally 
reached  the  outer  edge  of  the  herd,  traveling  a  mile  or 
so  on  the  backs  of  buffalo. 


102  WHEN  KANSAS  WAS  YOUNG 

I  asked  him  how  he  got  the  name  of  "Tiger  Jack" 
and  he  proceeded  to  unfold  a  marvelous  story  of  an 
adventure  in  Colorado.  He  informed  me  confidentially 
that  it  was  owing  to  his  efforts  that  Colorado  was  pre- 
vented from  going  out  of  the  Union.  The  fact  that 
Colorado  was  not  admitted  to  the  Union  until  eleven 
years  after  the  War  of  the  Rebellion  seemed  to  have 
escaped  his  memory.  After  his  heroic  stand  for  loyalty 
he  had  learned  that  a  white  woman  was  held  in  cap- 
tivity by  a  band  of  Indians  and,  feeling  that  the  Union 
was  saved  so  far  as  Colorado  was  concerned,  he  im- 
mediately set  out  like  a  knight  of  old  to  rescue  the 
captive  lady. 

"I  found  the  Indian  village  where  the  woman  was," 
said  Sparks,  "and  taking  the  bridle  rein  in  my  teeth 
and  a  revolver  in  each  hand,  I  rode  right  in,  grabbed 
the  woman  and  put  her  up  on  the  saddle  in  front  of 
me  and  rode  away.  That  was  where  I  got  the  title  of 
'Tiger  Jack/ '  I  submit  that  a  man  who  could  lift  a 
woman  up  on  his  saddle  while  carrying  a  revolver  in 
each  hand,  and  with  his  bridle  rein  in  his  teeth,  would 
be  entitled  to  be  called  "Tiger  Jack." 

It  was  a  peculiarity  of  "Tiger  Jack's"  stories  that, 
while  they  nearly  all  led  right  up  to  the  very  edge  of 
slaughter,  I  do  not  recall  that  he  ever  claimed  to  have 
killed  anybody.  Generally  his  presence  was  sufficient 
to  strike  terror  to  the  hearts  of  his  opponents,  and  so 
he  was  saved  from  the  necessity  of  killing  anyone.  I 
think  the  fact  was  that  Sparks,  who  was  really,  as  I 
have  said,  a  harmless  and  inoffensive  man,  did  not  want 
to  imagine  that  he  had  really  killed  anybody,  but  did 
want,  like  a  good  many  timid  men,  to  create  the  im- 
pression that  he  was  a  man  of  great  daring  and 
prowess.  For  a  good  while  after  making  his  acquaint- 
ance I  regarded  him  as  quite  an  interesting  liar,  but 
when  he  began  to  repeat  on  me,  telling  me  the  same  lies 


PICTURESQUE  FIGURES  103 

over  and  over  again,  they  grew  monotonous,  stale,  and 
unprofitable. 

Bad  Men — Real  and  Imitations 

There  has  been  a  great  deal  written  about  the  "bad 
men"  of  the  frontier,  but  not  a  great  deal  about  their 
harmless  imitators.  The  real  "bad  man"  of  the  frontier 
was  siii  generis.  He  had  certain  marked  character- 
istics. He  was  generally  quiet  even  when  in  liquor  and 
there  was  a  reason  for  this,  for  after  all  the  real  "bad 
man"  was  not  a  fair  fighter.  When  he  made  up  his 
mind  to  kill,  it  was  not  his  purpose  to  notify  the  victim 
of  his  intention.  He  was  not  of  the  rattlesnake  type 
which  gave  warning  when  about  to  strike,  but,  like 
the  copperhead  or  deadly  adder,  he  struck  swiftly  and 
with  deadly  certainty;  yet,  with  a  certain  cunning,  he 
generally  managed  to  make  it  seem  that  he  killed  in 
self-defense. 

It  is  true  that  there  were  noisy  cowboys  who,  when 
filled  with  the  craze-producing  hell  broth  that  passed 
for  whisky  in  the  frontier  towns,  would  go  on  a  ram- 
page and  howl  and  shoot,  but  generally  that  kind  of  a 
man  did  not  aim  to  kill  anybody  in  particular;  he 
was  just  firing  his  gun  for  the  purpose  of  creating  a 
general  panic  and  any  spectator  who  happened  to  be 
in  range  was  likely  to  get  hurt,  not  because  the  drunken 
cowboy  wanted  to  hurt  him,  but  because  he  was  un- 
fortunate enough  to  get  in  the  way  of  a  flying  bullet. 

There  were  also  a  few  men  who  were  in  no  sense  dan- 
gerous, but  who  possessed  a  curious  egotism  that  made 
them  want  to  create  the  impression  that  they  were 
really  desperate  characters.  They  made  no  impression 
on  those  who  were  acquainted  with  them,  but  a  stranger 
listening  to  one  of  them  for  the  first  time  was  likely 
to  get  the  impression  that  he  was  listening  to  a  real 


104  WHEN  KANSAS  WAS  YOUNG 

man,  whose  weapon  was  fairly  covered  with  notches, 
recording  the  number  of  victims  of  his  deadly  aim. 
Among  this  class  the  man  who  most  impressed  himself 
on  my  memory  was  "Uncle  Bill  Carl,"  who  had  a  claim, 
which  he  called  his  ranch,  on  the  Medicine. 

"Uncle  Bill"  was  really  a  kindly  soul,  as  harmless  as 
a  setter  pup,  but  dowered  by  nature  with  a  voice  like 
the  roaring  of  many  waters.  So  far  as  I  can  recall  he 
never  even  carried  a  gun,  which  after  all  was  an  evi- 
dence of  wisdom,  for  had  he  foolishly  gone  armed  with 
his  mouth  going  off  at  random  some  man  would  almost 
certainly  have  called  his  bluff  and  killed  him.  As  a 
romancer  "Uncle  Bill"  had  few  equals,  especially  when 
he  was  more  or  less  illuminated.  It  was  under  such  a 
condition  of  partial  inebriety  that  he  was  wont  to  make 
his  announcement,  especially  if  a  tenderfoot  happened 
to  be  present. 

"I'm  Buckskin  Bill  from  the  Rocky  Mountains,"  he 
would  roar  in  a  voice  which  made  the  rafters  shake. 
"When  I  was  in  my  prime  and  started  on  the  warpath 
grizzly  bears  hunted  their  holes  in  terror  and  women 
called  in  the  children  playin'  among  the  muskeet,  sayin' 
'Come  in  here  to  your  mother,  Buckskin  Bill  is  comin* 
down  the  mountain  with  blood  in  his  eye.'  But  Buck- 
skin Bill  from  the  Rocky  Mountains  never  harmed 
wimmen  er  children.  When  I  went  on  the  war  path  it 
was  as  an  avenger  of  blood.  'Dead  Eye  Dick'  and 
Slade,  the  chief  of  the  bandits,  knowed  Buckskin  Bill, 
and  when  they  heard  me  comin*  they  fled  fur  shelter 
to  the  deepest  recesses  of  the  mountains. 

"I  hev  whipped  twice  my  weight  of  mountain  lions 
and  strangled  a  wild  cat  with  each  hand  when  they  was 
both  a-clawin'  me.  I  could  shoot  so  fast  that  five 
bullets  out  of  my  gun  would  hit  a  man  after  I  ceased 
firin'.  With  the  bridle  rein  in  my  teeth  and  a  gun  in 
each  hand,  I  hev  rode  into  a  band  of  a  thousand  mur- 


PICTURESQUE  FIGURES  105 

derin'  Apaches  and  rescued  a  weepin'  female  from  her 
bloodthirsty  captors.'* 

Having  delivered  himself  of  this  historical  informa- 
tion in  a  deep  roaring  voice,  he  would  wind  up  with  a 
song  about 

"Hairlip  Sal  from  Bitter  Creek, 

She  wore  a  number  nine ; 
She  kicked  the  hat  off  a  Texas  galoot 
To  the  tune  of  'Auld  Lang  Syne.'  " 

Occasionally  "Uncle  Bill"  made  a  pilgrimage  to 
Wichita,  which  was  then  a  decidedly  wide-open  town. 
One  of  the  thirst  parlors  of  the  frontier  metropolis 
was  kept  by  a  German  of  uncertain  temper,  which  was 
not  improved  by  the  fact  that  occasionally  the  rounders 
made  a  concerted  raid  on  his  free  lunch  counter  and 
went  away  without  buying  even  so  much  as  a  glass  of 
beer.  "Uncle  Bill"  happened  in  at  one  of  the  times 
when  the  Dutchman  had  an  accumulation  of  grievances. 
There  was  what  was  called  a  reform  administration  just 
elected,  which  not  only  insisted  on  boosting  the  saloon 
license  fifty  per  cent,  but  also  passed  a  midnight  clos- 
ing ordinance  and  instructed  the  police  to  order  the 
saloonkeepers  to  have  less  noise  about  their  places  of 
business. 

Just  before  "Uncle  Bill"  blew  in,  the  Dutchman  had 
been  called  on  to  pay  his  increased  license ;  the  boys  had 
eaten  all  his  cheese,  wienerwurst,  and  other  refresh- 
ments on  his  free  lunch  counter  and  then  insolently 
directed  him  to  lay  in  a  new  supply  before  they  re- 
turned. The  policeman  on  that  beat  had  just  in- 
formed him  that  there  was  complaint  that  there  was 
too  much  noise  around  the  place.  Taken  altogether,  he 
was  in  no  amiable  frame  of  mind.  As  "Uncle  Bill"  lined 
up  with  the  crowd  in  front  of  the  bar  he  roared  out, 
"I'm  Buckskin  Bill  from  the  Rocky  Mountains.  I  kin 


106  WHEN  KANSAS  WAS  YOUNG 

whip  twice  my  weight  in  mountain  lions  and  hev 
strangled  two  wild  cats  at  one  time,  one  with  each 
hand  when  both  was  clawin'  at  my  frame.  Whoop !" 

It  was  just  about  the  last  straw.  The  Dutchman 
sized  "Uncle  Bill"  up  correctly  and  therefore  was  not 
impressed  or  afraid. 

"I  dond  care  veder  you  vas  Puckskin  Bill  or  Sheep- 
skin Bill,  I  vont  haf  you  makin'  all  this  noise  my  saloon 
in  and  bringin'  der  bolice  here  preddy  quick  all  of  a 
sudden  mit.  I  trow  you  oud  mit  here,"  and,  suiting  the 
action  to  the  word,  he  grasped  "Buckskin  Bill  from  the 
Rocky  Mountains"  by  the  collar  and  slack  of  his  pants 
and  heaved  him  out  of  the  door.  "Uncle  Bill"  was  just 
gathering  himself  up  from  the  sidewalk  when  a  friend 
who  knew  him  came  by. 

"What's  the  trouble,  'Uncle  Bill?'  " 

"Why,  that Dutchman  throwed  me  out." 

"What!"  exclaimed  the  friend  in  feigned  surprise, 
"You  don't  mean  to  say  that  a  Dutch  saloonkeeper 
threw  Buckskin  Bill  from  the  Rocky  Mountains  out  of 
the  saloon  and  still  lives?" 

"Hush,  son,  hush!"  replied  Bill,  as  he  brushed  the 
dirt  from  his  clothes  in  an  uncertain  manner,  'D'you 
suppose  that  Buckskin  Bill  from  the  Rocky  Mountains, 
the  terror  of  Wild  Cat  Gulch,  is  goin'  to  disgrace  him- 
self fightin'  with  a  Limburger-eatin*  Dutch- 
man?" 

A  Border  Justice 

When  the  town  of  Medicine  Lodge  had  achieved  a 
population  of  two  hundred  and  fifty,  some  of  the  enter- 
prising citizens  decided  that  it  ought  to  be  incorporated. 
They  argued  that  it  would  give  more  dignity  and  tone 
to  the  town  if  it  had  a  regular  city  government,  with 
a  mayor  and  a  city  marshal  wearing  his  star.  The 


PICTURESQUE  FIGURES  107 

required  petition  was  circulated  and  signed  by  a  ma- 
jority of  the  electors  of  the  village,  duly  presented  to 
the  board  of  county  commissioners,  the  proper  publica- 
tion made  and  Medicine  Lodge  became  a  city  of  the 
third  class.  Among  the  earliest  selections  for  the 
office  of  police  judge  was  L.  D.  Hess,  who  had  come 
to  the  frontier  town  to  start  a  grocery  store. 

Hess  was  a  man  who  wasted  fewer  words  in  express- 
ing his  ideas  than  almost  any  man  I  ever  knew.  He 
was  also  the  most  deliberate  man,  with  the  exception  of 
the  late  Judge  J.  D.  McFarland,  that  I  ever  met. 
During  an  acquaintance  of  several  years  I  never  saw 
him  show  any  indications  of  excitement  or  haste. 
Whether  the  town  was  stirred  by  the  advent  of  a  cow- 
boy filled  with  "hell's  delight,"  riding  full  tilt  through 
the  street,  scattering  shots  and  howling  profanity  as 
he  rode,  or  by  a  western  zephyr  cavorting  across  the 
townsite  filling  the  air  with  dust  and  shingles  and  awn- 
ings ripped  from  their  moorings,  Judge  Hess  main- 
tained the  same  imperturbable  calm  and  moved  about 
his  appointed  tasks  with  the  same  grave  delibera- 
tion. 

One  day  the  Judge  was  proceeding  along  the  street 
with  his  slow,  but  even  stride,  carrying  a  ladder,  his 
head  thrust  between  the  rungs  and  the  ladder  resting 
on  his  ample  shoulders,  for  it  may  be  noted  here  that 
notwithstanding  his  peacefulness  of  disposition,  in  these 
days  the  Judge  was  a  powerful  man.  He  never  quar- 
reled or  "fussed"  with  any  man.  Apparently  his  temper 
was  never  ruffled.  He  just  went  along  attending  strictly 
to  his  own  business  in  his  slow,  easy,  quiet  way  like 
a  man  who  was  at  peace  with  himself  and  all  man- 
kind. On  this  particular  day  a  cowboy  from  one 
of  the  territory  cattle  ranges  happened  to  be  in  town 
on  a  vacation.  He  had  already  imbibed  several  drinks 
of  the  far-reaching  liquor  that  was  dispensed  at  that 


108  WHEN  KANSAS  WAS  YOUNG 

date  and  was  filled  with  booze  and  happiness.  As  the 
Judge  passed  him  carrying  the  ladder  a  delightful  idea 
worked  its  way  into  the  brain  of  the  cowboy.  He 
suddenly  caught  the  end  of  the  ladder  and  swung  it 
violently  around.  The  Judge  caught  unawares  spun 
around  rapidly,  but  managed  to  keep  his  feet  under 
him.  Those  of  us  who  knew  him  were  compelled  to  say 
that  we  had  never  seen  him  move  with  such  alacrity. 
His  countenance,  however,  remained  calm  and  un- 
ruffled as  a  duck  pond  unstirred  by  the  wind. 

As  soon  as  he  fully  recovered  his  equilibrium  he 
lifted  the  ladder  from  his  shoulders,  set  it  up  carefully 
against  the  side  of  the  building,  moved  the  base  back 
a  trifle  so  that  there  would  be  no  danger  of  its  toppling 
over,  stepped  back  and  looked  at  the  ladder  to  see  that 
it  was  standing  to  suit  him,  and  then  turned  his  gaze 
slowly  toward  the  cowboy,  who  was  viewing  the  situa- 
tion with  great  delight. 

Then  there  was  a  surprise  for  the  man  from  the 
range.  The  Judge  moved  deliberately  over  toward  the 
cowboy  and  suddenly  his  powerful  right  arm  straight- 
ened. His  fist  caught  the  cowboy  fairly  under  the 
chin  and  almost  lifted  him  clear  of  the  ground.  The 
cowboy  lit  out  near  the  middle  of  the  street  and 
for  some  moments  subsequent  proceedings  did  not  in- 
terest him. 

On  the  countenance  of  the  Judge  there  was  no  in- 
dication of  either  excitement,  anger,  or  triumph. 
Calmly  he  took  the  ladder  from  the  wall,  adjusted 
it  to  his  shoulders  with  his  head  between  the  rungs, 
and  slowly  wended  his  way  toward  his  store,  where 
he  also  kept  his  office  as  police  judge.  There,  without 
the  slightest  indication  of  nervousness,  he  opened  his 
docket  and  made  an  entry  of  case  of  the  "City  of 
Medicine  Lodge  vs.  L.  D.  Hess ;  charge,  disturbing  the 
peace  by  fighting;  defendant  fined  $2  and  costs;  fine 


PICTURESQUE  FIGURES  109 

and  costs  paid  by  defendant;  case  closed."  With 
justice  fully  satisfied  and  the  law  vindicated,  Judge 
Hess  went  with  unruffled  calm  about  his  business.  But 
other  cowboys  did  not  try  to  have  fun  with  him. 


A  Frontier  Attorney 

Among  the  first  attorneys  to  settle  in  Medicine 
Lodge  was  a  young  Irishman,  in  after  years  known 
all  over  Kansas  as  Mike  Sutton.  At  the  age  of  fifteen 
Mike  had  entered  the  army,  spent  two  years  as  a  sol- 
dier, and  when  peace  came  determined  to  get  an  edu- 
cation and  study  law. 

In  the  early  seventies,  perhaps  1873  or  1874,  he 
landed  in  Medicine  Lodge  and  proclaimed  himself  a 
lawyer.  Business  for  a  lawyer  was  decidedly  scarce 
and  the  picking  slim.  Mike  was,  however,  single  and 
care-free  and  not  disposed  to  worry  over  his  financial 
condition.  To  save  laundry  bills  he  washed  his  single 
shirt  in  the  clear,  soft  waters  of  Elm  Creek  and  rested 
under  the  shade  of  the  plum  bushes  while  the  gar- 
ment dried  in  the  sun.  On  one  occasion  the  driver 
of  the  buckboard,  which  carried  the  government  mail 
between  Medicine  Lodge  and  Hutchinson,  saw  a  shirt 
draped  over  a  bush  near  the  crossing  and  was  about  to 
appropriate  it,  when  Mike,  concealed  in  the  bushes, 
yelled  at  him.  "Hi,  there,  let  that  shirt  alone.  You 
have  two  shirts  that  I  know  of.  What  do  you  want 
to  rob  a  man  for  who  only  has  one?  This  is  no  Garden 
of  Eden  where  a  man  can  run  naked  like  Adam  did 
before  he  climbed  that  apple  tree!" 

Mike  formed  a  partnership  with  another  indigent 
young  lawyer  by  the  name  of  Whitelaw,  who  for  some 
inscrutable  reason  had  gotten  the  notion  in  his  head 
that  there  was  room  for  another  lawyer  in  the  frontier 


110  WHEN  KANSAS  WAS  YOUNG 

town.  Somehow  the  firm  got  a  case  that  had  to  be  tried 
at  Hutchinson.  As  the  time  of  trial  approached  Mike, 
for  the  first  time  since  his  settlement  in  the  town,  ap- 
peared to  be  somewhat  worried.  "Jim,"  said  he  to  his 
partner,  "one  of  us  has  got  to  go  to  Hutchinson  and 
try  that  case.  I  really  haven't  clothes  fitting  to  ap- 
pear in  court,  but  you  have  a  pair  of  overalls,  nearly 
new,  and  a  shirt  that  you  haven't  been  wearing  more 
than  six  months.  You  also  have  a  pair  of  socks  and 
your  toes  are  not  sticking  out  of  your  shoes.  You 
will  have  to  go  and  show  the  court  that  this  firm  has 
some  style  and  dignity." 

In  1876  or  1877  Mike  decided  that  the  prospects  for 
law  business  in  Medicine  Lodge  were  not  encouraging 
and  moved  to  the  wild  and  woolly  town  of  Dodge,  then 
the  end  of  the  great  Texas  cattle  trail  and  there  he 
lived  until  his  death  about  a  year  ago.  He  built  up 
a  lucrative  practice,  became  recognized  as  one  of  the 
most  successful  and  resourceful  lawyers  in  the  state  of 
Kansas,  and  died  possessed  of  a  comfortable  fortune. 

A  story  is  told  of  the  resourcefulness  of  Mike  Sut- 
ton  in  the  trial  of  a  law  suit.  A  witness  was  on  the 
stand  whose  testimony,  unless  it  could  be  discounted 
in  some  way,  would  probably  knock  the  bottom  out  of 
Mike's  case.  It  looked  as  if  he  was  up  against  it  when 
suddenly  the  thought  occurred  to  him  to  introduce  as 
a  witness  an  expert  on  prevarication. 

"Buffalo  Jones,"  the  well  known  hunter  and  town 
builder,  was  sitting  in  the  room  where  the  case  was 
being  tried.  "Buffalo  Jones  will  take  the  stand,"  said 
Mike.  The  case  was  in  justice  court. 

"Buffalo"  had  not  anticipated  being  called  into  the 
case,  but  he  promptly  came  forward  and  was  sworn. 

"State  your  name  and  place  of  residence,"  said  Mike. 

"My  name  is  C.  J.  Jones.  I  live  in  Garden  City, 
Kan." 


PICTURESQUE  FIGURES  111 

"How  long  have  you  lived  in  western  Kansas?" 

"Thirty  years." 

"From  your  experience  and  observation  of  men  in 
this  western  country  are  you  able  to  tell  from  the 
expression  of  countenance,  the  manner  of  speech,  and 
the  actions  of  a  man  whether  or  not  he  is  a  liar?" 

"I  am,"  calmly  answered  Jones. 

"You  are  something  of  a  liar  yourself,  are  you  not, 
Mr.  Jones?" 

"I  am,"  again  calmly  answered  Jones. 

"Have  you  carefully  observed  the  countenance,  the 
manner  of  speech,  and  the  actions  of  the  witness  who 
just  left  the  stand?" 

"I  have." 

"Will  you  state  to  the  court  as  an  expert  on  pre- 
varication whether  or  not  this  witness  is  a  liar?" 

"My  judgment  as  an  expert  on  truth  and  prevari- 
cation is  that  he  is  a  liar." 

"Take  the  witness,"  said  Mike  triumphantly. 

It  was  in  vain  that  the  attorney  on  the  other  side 
protested  to  the  justice  of  the  peace  that  this  was 
an  unheard-of  proceeding,  that  the  books  nowhere  gave 
any  authority  for  introducing  an  expert  on  prevarica- 
tion and  that  Jones  had  not  in  any  event  qualified 
himself  to  testify  as  an  expert.  The  justice  knew  that 
Mike  Sutton  understood  his  business  and  decided  as 
follows:  "It  is  the  opinion  of  this  court  that  Mike 
would  introduce  no  incompetent  testimony." 


Didn't  Recollect  the  President 

Back  in  the  seventies  there  lived  in  the  state  of  New 
York  a  widow  possessed  of  considerable  wealth  and 
a  son  named  Stanley,  who  caused  a  lot  of  worry 
and  gray  hairs  to  his  fond  mother,  for  Stanley  was 
decidedly  inclined  to  wander  into  the  primrose-lined 


112  WHEN  KANSAS  WAS  YOUNG 

paths  of  sin.  He  looked  on  the  wine  when  it  was  red. 
He  also  looked  on  and  sampled  practically  everything 
else  that  had  a  kick  to  it  and  as  a  result  the  boy 
was  fairly  well  lit  up  most  of  the  time. 

It  occurred  to  Mrs.  Parsons,  Stanley's  mother,  that 
if  she  could  get  her  boy  far  away  from  the  giddy 
throng  and  lure  of  the  city,  he  would  reform  and  be- 
come a  credit  to  his  name  and  family.  She  had  heard 
of  the  great  free  ranges  of  the  west,  where  cattle  fed 
on  the  sweet  native  grasses  and  fattened  without  any 
expense  worth  mentioning.  It  occurred  to  her  that  if 
her  wayward  boy  could  be  induced  to  go  out  there  where 
he  would  be  widely  separated  from  his  old-time  com- 
panions and  kept  busy  looking  after  his  grazing  herd 
and  communing  with  nature,  he  would  forget  his  ac- 
quired thirst  and  likewise  accumulate  wealth,  because 
the  widow  was  inclined  to  be  thrifty  as  well  as  anxious 
for  the  moral  welfare  of  her  son.  "Stan"  fell  in  with 
the  idea  readily  enough,  because  there  was  in  his  blood 
a  certain  longing  for  adventure,  and  then,  when  out 
of  reach  of  his  mother,  he  would  be  freed  from  her 
chidings. 

So  one  day  in  the  later  seventies  he  landed  at  Medi- 
cine Lodge  with  enough  money  to  buy  a  moderate  sized 
herd  of  cattle  and  secured  a  range  a  few  miles  west 
of  the  frontier  town.  If  Stan  was  separated  from  his 
old  cronies,  he  had  hardly  more  than  landed  in  the 
cattle  country  until  he  began  to  associate  himself  with 
new  ones,  who,  when  the  opportunity  offered,  could 
hit  a  fairly  rapid  pace  themselves,  and  it  may  be  re- 
marked in  passing  that  Stan  was  generally  well  to  the 
front  of  the  procession. 

What  his  fond  mother  did  not  know  was  that  while 
the  bounding  west,  that  part  included  in  the  great  cat- 
tle ranges,  did  not  boast  of  the  ornate  saloons  where 
the  devotees  of  Bacchus  were  wont  to  gather  and  per- 


PICTURESQUE  FIGURES  113 

form  their  libations,  it  was  supplied  with  a  brand  of 
liquor  of  far-reaching  and  intensive  power.  Men  who 
tarried  with  it  long  and  often  were  apt  to  acquire  a 
new  variety  of  delirium  tremens,  under  the  influence 
of  which  their  diseased  imaginations  not  only  beheld 
ordinary  reptiles  but  prehistoric  monsters — ichthyo- 
sauruses,  dynastidans,  pterodactyls,  and  mournful 
whangdoodles  from  the  mountains  of  Hepsidam.  Stan 
Parsons  imbibed  large  quantities  of  the  fluid  commonly 
known  in  that  section  as  "Hell's  Delight,"  and  was 
"stewed"  most  of  the  time.  When  the  general  quietude 
of  the  railroadless  town  of  Medicine  Lodge  palled  on 
him  he  would  go  to  Hutchinson,  where  he  would  remain 
for  days  or  even  weeks  in  a  condition  of  partial  or  total 
inebriation,  his  cattle  meanwhile  looking  out  for 
themselves.  It  is  hardly  necessary  to  say  that  his  herd 
did  not  increase  and  multiply. 

In  the  fall  of  1879  Rutherford  B.  Hayes,  then  presi- 
dent of  the  United  States,  decided  to  make  an  official 
tour  of  the  country.  The  journey  planned  was  the 
most  extensive  ever  taken  by  a  president  up  to  that 
time.  Accompanied  by  one  or  two  members  of  his 
cabinet,  his  wife,  Lucy,  who  some  people  were  mean 
enough  to  say  was  the  real  president  of  the  republic 
during  Rutherford's  term  of  office,  General  Sherman, 
and  other  notables,  the  presidential  party  crossed  the 
continent,  visited  several  of  the  Pacific  coast  cities  and 
on  the  return  trip  passed  through  Kansas.  This  was 
the  first  time  that  a  president  had  visited  the  Sun- 
flower state  while  in  office  and  there  was  great  interest 
in  his  journey.  At  that  time  there  were  many  thou- 
sands of  the  men  who  had  followed  Sherman  to  the 
sea  living  in  Kansas  and  they  were  especially  elated 
at  the  prospect  of  meeting  their  old  commander ;  in  fact 
Sherman  received  a  more  enthusiastic  welcome,  so  far 
as  Kansas  was  concerned,  than  the  president. 


114  WHEN  KANSAS  WAS  YOUNG 

Arrangements  were  made  for  a  number  of  stops  in 
the  state,  one  of  them  at  Hutchinson.  In  his  day 
Rutherford  B.  Hayes  was  the  most  expert  handshaker 
among  public  men.  He  had  a  way  of  reaching  out  and 
getting  hold  of  the  other  fellow's  hand  and  doing  the 
shaking  himself.  This  was  done  as  a  matter  of  self- 
protection,  for  if  a  public  man  at  a  general  reception 
were  to  permit  his  hand  to  be  gripped  by  a  few  thou- 
sand muscular  and  earnest  sons  of  toil  he  would  have 
little  more  use  for  that  hand  for  weeks  afterward. 
Hayes  not  only  always  took  the  initiative  in  the  pub- 
lic handshaking,  but  he  had  the  manner  of  a  man  who 
was  grasping  the  hand  of  an  old  friend  whom  he  had 
not  seen  for  years.  When  the  presidential  train 
stopped  at  Hutchinson,  Hayes  took  his  place  on  the 
platform  and  the  crowd  formed  in  single  file  to  pass 
and  shake  his  hand  or  rather  to  let  their  hands  be 
shaken. 

It  happened  that  just  at  that  time  Stan  Parsons 
was  making  one  of  his  visits  to  the  town  on  the 
Cowskin,  and,  noting  the  gathering  crowd,  went  down 
to  the  depot  with  a  somewhat  hazy  idea  of  finding  out 
what  it  was  all  about.  Once  in  the  crowd  he  staggered 
into  line  and  finally  came  to  the  President.  Hayes,  with 
his  ingratiating,  friendly  smile  and  manner  reached  out, 
grasped  Stan's  hand,  and  shook  it  heartily.  Stan 
paused,  regarded  Hayes  from  head  to  foot  with  drunken 
gravity,  scratched  his  head  in  a  vain  endeavor  to  recol- 
lect, and  finally  said:  "By  G stranger,  you  seem 

to  have  the  advantage  of  me.  Seems  to  me  that  I  ought 
to  know  your  face,  but  damned  if  I  can  remember  your 
name  at  all." 

Some  Limbs  of  the  Law 

I  do  not  know  whether  it  was  the  case  with  all  fron- 
tier towns,  but  certainly  in  the  early  days  of  Medicine 


PICTURESQUE  FIGURES  115 

Lodge  the  legal  profession  was  not  taken  seriously. 
There  were  no  barriers  to  admission  to  the  bar.  The 
less  a  man  knew  the  more  readily  he  was  admitted. 
If  there  was  a  suspicion  that  the  applicant  did  know 
something  about  law,  there  might  be  some  little  curi- 
osity on  the  part  of  the  committee  appointed  to  ex- 
amine him  as  to  his  qualifications,  to  find  out  what 
he  did  know,  but  where  it  was  entirely  evident  that  the 
man  applying  for  admission  neither  knew  anything 
about  law  nor  even  suspected  anything  about  it,  the 
task  of  the  examining  committee  was  easy.  The  ex- 
amination consisted  of  just  one  question:  "Are  you 
ready  and  willing  to  set  *em  up?" 

With  this  simple  formality  disposed  of,  the  com- 
mittee on  examination  returned  into  court  and  re- 
ported that  they  had  examined  the  applicant  and  found 
him  well  qualified  for  admission  to  the  bar;  he  had  al- 
ready been  admitted  to  one  bar  to  their  personal  knowl- 
edge and  had  shown  reasonable  familiarity  with  the 
procedure  there.  Then  the  applicant  held  up  his  right 
hand,  swore  to  support  the  Constitution  of  the  United 
States  and  the  Constitution  of  the  state  of  Kansas  and 
became,  so  far  as  the  record  was  concerned,  a  full- 
fledged  member  of  the  legal  profession.  A  good  many 
men  for  one  reason  and  another  have  an  ambition  to 
be  called  lawyers  and  to  create  the  impression  among 
those  who  do  not  know  them  well,  that  they  are  fa- 
miliar with  the  intricacies  and  technicalities  of  court 
procedure.  So  it  came  about  that  a  good  many  men 
were  admitted  to  the  bar  in  that  frontier  town  who 
neither  knew  anything  about  law  or  court  practice  then, 
nor  afterward.  Now  there  were  some  really  able  lawyers 
out  there  even  in  the  early  days.  It  might  be  supposed 
that  they  would  have  objected  to  the  admission  of  these 
entirely  unqualified  men,  but  their  viewpoint  was  this: 
Ninety  per  cent,  of  these  persons  would  never  dare  to 


116  WHEN  KANSAS  WAS  YOUNG 

display  their  ignorance  by  coming  into  court,  and  the 
other  ten  per  cent,  who  might  have  the  nerve  to  un- 
dertake to  practice  would  probably  get  so  tangled  up 
that  they  would  be  compelled  to  get  a  real  lawyer  to 
help  them  out  and  therefore  these  ignoramuses  would 
really  create  business  for  attorneys  who  had  some 
knowledge  and  skill. 

Once  in  a  while  a  man  who  knew  practically  no  law 
would  hang  out  his  sign,  and  even  undertake  to  practice 
in  J.  P.  courts.  He  would  also  get  an  appointment 
as  notary  public,  and  gather  in  a  few  dollars  from 
taking  acknowledgments  and  other  notary  work. 

One  of  these  was  H.  Davis.  Just  how  he  man- 
aged to  exist  was  something  of  a  mystery,  as  he  was 
never  known,  as  I  recollect,  to  do  any  work  outside 
of  his  profession,  and  mighty  little  inside  of  it.  True, 
he  was  frequently,  I  might  say  generally,  financially 
embarrassed,  but  as  this  had  become  his  normal  con- 
dition, it  did  not  seem  to  worry  him  any,  although  I 
recall  one  exception  to  this  general  rule.  Davis  had 
his  laundry  work  done  by  a  tall,  angular  lady  from 
south  Missouri  or  northern  Arkansas,  by  the  name  of 
Mrs.  Upperman.  Mrs.  Upperman  was  a  female  of 
vitriolic  temper,  and  given  at  times  to  intemperate 
speech.  The  one  sweet  solace  of  her  simple  life  was 
a  cob  pipe  with  an  extra  long  stem.  This  pipe  was  a 
barometer,  indicating  with  reasonable  certainty  when 
there  was  domestic  calm  or  storm  in  the  Upperman 
household.  If  Mrs.  Upperman  was  feeling  at  peace 
with  the  world  and  her  family,  the  smoke  curled  easily 
from  the  pipe  and  was  emitted  in  regular  puffs  from 
her  mouth  and  blown  into  graceful  rings  in  the  sur- 
rounding atmosphere;  but  if  there  was  a  storm  brew- 
ing, the  draft  on  the  pipe  was  increased  until  the  to- 
bacco burned  a  living  coal  and  the  smoke  was  emitted 
from  her  mouth  in  a  cloud  that  nearly  obscured  the 


PICTURESQUE  FIGURES  117 

surrounding  landscape.  At  such  times  her  spouse,  who 
like  the  lily  of  the  field,  generally  toiled  not  and  neither 
did  he  spin,  being  content  to  live  on  his  wife's  bounty, 
took  warning  from  the  signs  he  had  learned  to  un- 
derstand, and  hunted  for  more  peaceful  localities  until 
the  domestic  storm  had  blown  over.  Davis'  washing 
was  not  large.  His  financial  circumstances  tended  to 
limit  his  wardrobe,  but  at  that  it  cost  a  few  cents  to 
have  a  shirt  and  collar  washed  and  ironed  once  a 
week,  and  for  several  weeks,  with  one  excuse  and  an- 
other, he  had  put  off  the  payment  of  his  wash  bill. 

The  time  came  when  the  patience  of  Mrs.  Upper- 
man  was  exhausted.  She  did  not  carry  a  large  stock 
of  patience  at  any  time  and  then  other  things  had  just 
at  that  time  made  drafts  on  what  little  she  had.  She 
made  up  her  mind  that  lawyer  Davis  would  pay  her 
that  $1.50  he  owed  her  or  she  would  know  the  rea- 
son why.  She  was  also  in  a  frame  of  mind,  as  she 
said,  to  "take  it  out  of  his  worthless  hide"  if  he  didn't 
come  across.  Her  residence  was  down  in  the  bottom 
and  on  a  bright  and  cheerful  morning  she  started  on 
her  quest  for  Davis.  Her  faithful  pipe  was  drawing 
well  and  as  she  proceeded  toward  the  place  where  the 
alleged  lawyer  had  his  office,  a  stream  of  smoke  rolled 
back  over  her  shoulder  like  the  smoke  from  the  engine 
of  a  heavy  freight  train  on  the  upgrade. 

Davis  saw  her  first  and  scented  danger.  He  made 
a  somewhat  undignified  retreat  to  what  he  called  his 
office,  a  room  in  the  only  two-story  building  in  the 
town,  and  locked  and  barricaded  the  door  a  minute  or 
so  before  Mrs.  Upperman  reached  there.  The  super- 
heated remarks  of  the  wash  lady  poured  through  the 
keyhole,  but  elicited  no  reply  in  kind  from  Davis.  She 
gave  him  an  extended  and  vivid  description  of  the  vari- 
ous things  she  intended  to  do  to  him  and  also  painted 
a  word  picture  of  how  he  would  look  after  she  got 


118  WHEN  KANSAS  WAS  YOUNG 

through  with  him.  To  make  the  matter  worse,  much 
worse  in  fact,  Davis  knew  that  she  had  a  deep  and 
earnest  purpose  to  carry  her  threats  into  execution. 
He  resorted  at  first  to  blandishments  calculated  to  ap- 
peal to  female  vanity,  but  was  informed  through  the 
keyhole  that  he  needn't  try  any  "soft  soapin*,  honey 
fuglin'  business"  with  her.  The  only  way  he  could 
square  himself  was  to  dig  up  $1.50.  There  was  noth- 
ing left  but  unconditional  surrender.  The  impecunious 
notary  public  assured  her  that  if  she  would  let  him 
out  he  would  dig  up  the  money,  and  it  may  be  re- 
marked in  passing  that  she  stayed  with  him  until  he  did. 
At  that  time  the  late  Samuel  R.  Peters  was  judge 
of  the  district  in  which  Barber  County  was  included. 
To  reach  there  he  had  to  travel  on  a  buckboard  nearly 
a  hundred  miles  and  once  for  some  reason  he  failed  to 
arrive  at  the  time  designated  by  statute  for  the 
opening  of  the  term.  He  had  sent  a  letter  requesting 
that  some  one  be  elected  judge  pro  tern,  until  he  could 
get  there.  The  leader  of  the  Medicine  Lodge  bar  sol- 
emnly arose  on  the  regular  opening  day  of  court  and 
moved  that  Hon.  Harve  Davis  be  elected  judge  pro  tern. 
The  proposal  was  hailed  with  joy  by  those  present  and 
Davis  was  duly  elected.  He  was  flattered  by  the  honor 
conferred,  but  after  taking  the  seat  usually  occupied 
by  the  judge,  was  at  a  loss  how  to  proceed.  The  lead- 
ing lawyer  again  rose  and  gravely  said :  "I  move  that 
this  court  do  now  adjourn."  The  judge  pro  tern,  did 
not  know  much  about  court  procedure  but  it  ran 
through  his  mind  that  a  motion  to  adjourn  was  always 
in  order.  "It  is  moved  that  this  court  do  now  adjourn. 
Is  there  a  second  to  that  motion?"  asked  the  court. 
There  was.  "It  is  moved  and  seconded  that  this  court 
do  now  adjourn.  All  in  favor  of  that  motion  signify 
the  same  by  saying  aye."  There  was  a  loud  chorus  of 
ayes.  "All  opposed  will  signify  the  same  by  saying 


PICTURESQUE  FIGURES  119 

no.  The  ayes  seem  to  have  it  and  the  court  stands 
adjourned." 

Another  individual  admitted  to  the  bar  under  the  free 
and  easy  method  I  have  mentioned  was  "Red,"  per- 
haps better  known  as  "Skunk"  Conner.  Conner,  a 
large,  beefy  individual  who  had  a  small  herd  of  cattle 
down  on  the  Medicine,  was  accustomed  to  add  to  his 
income  by  trapping  skunks,  which  were  quite  plentiful. 
As  a  result  of  his  devotion  to  the  chase,  when  the  wind 
was  right  a  person  with  reasonably  keen  olfactories 
could  detect  his  presence  when  he  was  still  afar  off. 
Some  of  his  critics  insisted  that  the  reason  he  was 
so  successful  in  trapping  skunks  was  because  they  took 
him  for  a  member  of  their  tribe,  and  just  naturally 
followed  him,  charmed  by  his  smell,  even  as  the  animals 
of  mythology  followed  Orpheus,  charmed  by  the  silver 
notes  of  his  flute. 

Conner  decided  that  he  wanted  to  be  admitted  to 
the  bar.  There  was  difficulty  in  getting  a  committee 
to  examine  him,  a  number  of  members  of  the  bar  in- 
sisting that,  even  if  "Skunk"  agreed  to  set  'em  up,  the 
smell  of  him  would  spoil  the  taste  of  the  "licker."  He 
was,  however,  admitted,  and  while,  so  far  as  I  know, 
he  never  undertook  to  conduct  a  case  himself,  he  did 
become  involved  in  litigation  with  some  of  his  neighbor 
ranchmen  and  was  defeated  at  the  trial  of  the  case. 
Here  was  his  chance  to  show  his  knowledge  of  the  law. 
"Well,"  he  said  to  his  attorney,  "this  isn't  goin'  to 
stop  here.  We  will  just  get  our  witnesses  together  and 
go  to  the  supreme  court." 


"The  Pilgrim  Bard" 

Among  the  unique  characters  who  settled  in  Barber 
County  in  the  early  seventies  was  Orange  Scott  Cum- 


120  WHEN  KANSAS  WAS  YOUNG 

mins,  better  known  as  the  "Pilgrim  Bard."  He  was 
born  in  the  state  of  Ohio,  but  at  the  early  age  of  two 
years,  took  his  parents  by  their  hands  and  moved 
west  to  the  then  wilderness  of  Iowa.  Indians  were 
plentiful  and  young  redskins  were  often  his  playmates. 
When  he  grew  to  manhood  he  was  possessed  of  a  swar- 
thy complexion  and  jet  black  hair,  which  he  permitted 
to  grow  long.  In  appearance  he  looked  enough  like 
an  Indian  to  be  mistaken  for  a  member  of  the  tribe. 
Indeed  the  story  was  at  one  time  circulated  that  the 
Indians  had  taken  a  fancy  to  the  Cummins  child  and 
exchanged  one  of  their  own  children  for  it,  a  story 
so  highly  improbable  that  it  was  not  worth  consider- 
ing. When  I  first  met  the  frontier  poet  he  was  en- 
gaged in  the  business  of  transporting  the  bones  of  the 
deceased  buffalo  to  Wichita,  then  the  greatest  bone 
market  in  the  world.  He  was  addressing  his  mules 
in  language  that,  at  least  prior  to  the  late  war,  would 
not  have  been  permissible  in  an  Epworth  League  meet- 
ing, and  while  his  style  of  profanity  was  strikingly  ar- 
tistic, I  did  not  know  until  afterward  that  I  was  listen- 
ing to  the  heartfelt  expressions  of  a  poetic  soul. 

His  cabin,  or  cottonwood  shanty,  was  located  on 
the  banks  of  a  clear  running  and  beautiful  little  stream 
which  bore  the  unromantic  cognomen  of  "Mule  Creek." 
He  named  his  place  the  "Last  Chance,"  because  it  was 
the  last  chance  for  pilgrims  heading  for  the  still  fur- 
ther west  to  get  a  meal  under  a  roof,  for  at  this  time 
beyond  lay  the  untamed  wilderness,  stretching  away  to 
the  slopes  of  the  Rocky  Mountains. 

His  poems  were  suggested  by  environment,  by  cli- 
matic conditions,  by  the  incidents  of  border  life.  In 
my  opinion  some  of  them  rank  up  with  some  of  the  best 
productions  of  James  Whitcomb  Riley.  Here,  for  ex- 
ample, is  his  "Ode  to  the  March  Wind": 


PICTURESQUE  FIGURES  121 

When  the  old  house  keeps  a  rockin* 

Like  as  if  'twas  goin'  to  fall; 
And  the  pebbles  keep  a  knockin' — 
Knockin'  'gainst  the  fragile  wall, 
Sets  a  feller  thinkin' 

Of  fell  goblin,  wraith  or  fiend, 
Fancy  into  fancy  linkin' 

Yet  'tis  nothin'  but  the  wind; 
Roar,  roar,  rattle  door, 
Through  each  cranny  in  the  floor, 
Through  each  crack  and  crevice  small, 
Where  a  chigger  scarce  could  crawl 
Every  seam  'tis  sure  to  find 
O  beshrew  the  bleak  March  wind. 

All  day  long  to  feed  the  critters, 

I  have  tried  my  level  best ; 
Tears  my  fodder  into  fritters, 

Splits  the  endgate  of  my  vest; 
Almost  sets  a  feller  cussin' 

Yet  too  well  I  understand, 
If  I  ope'  my  mouth  a  fussin' 

'Twould  soon  fill  with  dust  and  sand; 
Shriek,  shriek,  creak,  creak — 
Seven  long  days  in  a  week; 
Though  my  language  seems  unkind, 
Devil  take  the  bleak  March  wind. 

While  hauling  bones  to  Wichita  he  camped  one  day 
on  Smoots  Creek  in  a  blinding  sand  storm  which 
prompted  him  to  write  the  following: 

"O  bury  me  not  in  the  land  of  sand" 

The  words  came  low  from  a  granger  man 

As  he  wearily  sat  down  on  the  beam  of  his  plow, 

His  face  was  wan  and  his  heart  beat  low. 

Battered  and  blowed  for  three  years  past 
By  the  raging  wind  and  sandy  blast, 
Until  now  he  felt  that  the  end  was  nigh, 
So  he  shut  up  his  fists  and  gave  up  to  die. 


122  WHEN  KANSAS  WAS  YOUNG 

"I  could  not  sleep,"  the  granger  said, 
"Where  the  wind  and  sand  sweep  o'er  my  head; 
O  grant  the  request  of  a  worn  out  man 
And  bury  me  not  in  the  land  of  sand." 

"I  had  ever  hoped  to  be  lowly  laid, 
When  my  time  had  come,  'neath  the  paw-paw  shade 
Where  the  loving  hands  of  my  own  wife's  kin 
Would  dig  a  grave  that  wouldn't  cave  in." 

His  faltering  voice  was  failing  fast ; 
It  seemed  each  breath  would  be  his  last, 
His  eyes  had  well  nigh  ceased  to  wink, 
When  a  passing  freighter  gave  him  a  drink. 

Then  he  sprang  to  his  feet  with  a  sudden  start, 
Unhitched  from  the  plow  and  hooked  onto  the  cart, 
His  red  headed  women  and  children  climb  in 
And  away  they  go  to  his  own  wife's  kin. 

As  he  seized  the  whip  in  bony  hand, 
"Farewell,"  said  he,  "to  the  land  of  sand; 
Farewell  to  the  grave — I  was  just  on  its  brink. 
May  God  bless  the  freighter  who  gave  me  the  drink." 

In  a  more  cheerful  vein  was  his   poem  "When  it 
Rains." 

I  can  hear  the  frogs  a-croakin' 

While  it  rains, 
Tranquilly  their  hides  are  soakin* 

While  it  rains; 

And  the  beetle  and  the  skeeter 
Singin'  hymns  to  common  meter, 
Ever  sounds  the  chorus  sweeter 

While  it  rains. 

I  can  see  the  small  boy  wadin* 

While  it  rains, 
Every  muddy  pool  invadin' 

While  it  rains; 


PICTURESQUE  FIGURES  123 

And  the  bosom  of  his  breeches 
To  the  muddy  water  reaches — 
Then  his  ma  a  lesson  teaches 
While  it  rains. 

Hark!  amid  the  thunder's  rumblin* 

While  it  rains, 
Hear  the  chronic  kicker  grumblin' 

While  it  rains. 

Three  days  since  his  creak  uncivil 
Told  of  drouth's  impending  evil, 
Now  the  mud  just  beats  the  devil 

While  it  rains. 

Solves  the  great  financial  trouble 

Glorious  rain, 
Bursts  full  many  a  bogus  bubble — 

Glorious  rain, 

Keeps  the  dread  hot  winds  from  blowin* 
Keeps  the  monster  crops  a-growin' 
Keeps  the  farmer's  hopes  a-glowin* 

Bless  the  rain. 


Scott  Cummins  never  held  office  so  far  as  I  know,  but 
once.  It  is  said  that  before  landing  in  Barber  County, 
he  stopped  for  a  little  while  at  the  then  just  beginning 
village  of  Wellington.  There  was  a  vacancy  in  the 
office  of  justice  of  the  peace  and  the  lawyers  finally 
persuaded  the  poet  to  take  the  job.  One  of  the  first 
cases  to  be  brought  before  Squire  Cummins  was  filed 
by  D.  N.  Caldwell.  Caldwell  was  sick  and  J.  M. 
Hoover  attended  to  the  case  for  him.  On  the  other 
side  were  John  G.  Tucker  and  Mike  Sutton,  both  now 
dead.  The  attorneys  filed  various  motions  which  Cum- 
mins didn't  understand  and  argued  and  wrangled  for 
hours.  Cummins  at  that  time  was  keeping  a  hotel. 
When  the  dinner  bell  rang  the  wearied  and  disgusted 
justice  announced  that  the  court  would  adjourn  until 


124  WHEN  KANSAS  WAS  YOUNG 

1 :30.  Then  straightening  up  he  said,  "Now  that  the 
court  has  adjourned  I  want  to  tell  you  d — n  lawyers 
what  I  think  of  you.  I  told  you  to  start  with  that 
I  didn't  have  sense  enough  to  be  justice  of  the  peace, 
but  every  one  of  you  promised  to  help  me.  You  have 
helped  me,  haven't  you?  Yes,  you  have  helped  me  like 
h — 1."  When  1 :30  came  the  justice  didn't  appear  in 
the  court  room.  After  waiting  an  hour  the  lawyers 
sent  a  messenger  after  him.  He  sent  back  by  the  mes- 
senger this  answer:  "Tell  them  damned  lawyers  that  I 
have  resigned  and  say  for  them  to  go  to  hell." 


Phrenology  under  Difficulties 

Harking  back  through  the  mists  of  years  it  seems 
as  if  the  humor  of  the  frontier  was  somewhat  crude 
and  inconsiderate  of  the  persons  toward  whom  it  was 
directed,  but  it  must  be  acknowledged  that  it  was 
characterized  by  a  large  degree  of  originality  and  spon- 
taneity. The  frontiersman  delighted  in  practical  jokes 
and  was  decidedly  careless  about  the  effect  on  the  nerves 
of  the  victim.  The  tenderfoot  was  hailed  with  joy,  not 
because  the  seasoned  and  "hard-boiled"  frontiersmen 
were  anxious  to  welcome  the  stranger  within  their  gates 
and  show  him  honor,  but  because  of  the  probability  that 
he  would  furnish  material  for  the  particular  kind  of 
amusement  in  which  they  delighted  and  thus  add  to  the 
joy  of  their  existence. 

It  was  along  in  the  middle  seventies  when  phrenology 
was  more  of  a  vogue  than  it  is  at  present,  that  an  itin- 
erant lecturer  strayed  out  as  far  as  Dodge  City  and 
let  it  be  known  that  he  would  give  a  more  or  less  illus- 
trated lecture  on  the  science  of  phrenology  and  demon- 
strate his  ability  to  tell  the  character  and  adaptability 
of  the  people  in  his  audience  by  examining  their  cranial 


PICTURESQUE  FIGURES  125 

development.  Almost  as  soon  as  they  had  given  him 
the  look  over  it  occurred  to  the  crowd  gathered  for 
refreshments  in  the  Long  Branch  saloon,  that  a  kindly 
Providence  had  delivered  into  their  hands  a  man  who, 
if  properly  handled,  would  for  an  hour  or  two  afford 
joyous  relief  from  the  tedium  of  their  existence.  It 
was  immediately  decided  to  have  a  committee  wait  on 
the  "professor"  and  not  only  invite  but  urge  him  to 
give  an  exhibition  of  his  knowledge  in  the  "Red  Light'* 
dance  hall  that  evening. 

The  committee  assured  him  that  the  town  had  long 
been  waiting  for  a  man  of  his  profession  to  come  and 
enlighten  the  public.  They  said  that  there  were  a  lot 
of  long-haired  sons  of  mavericks  about  whom  the  peo- 
ple of  Dodge  were  in  doubt.  There  was  a  sort  of 
general  impression  that  maybe  these  persons  were 
horse  thieves,  or  if  they  were  not  already  horse  thieves, 
they  might  be  heading  that  way  and  they  wanted  a  man 
who  understood  phrenology  to  tell  them,  so  that  they 
would  know  what  to  do.  They  said  that  if  these  sus- 
pected parties  were  really  horse  thieves,  or  would  nat- 
urally take  to  that  business,  it  would  save  a  lot  of 
trouble  and  property  just  to  hang  them  now,  rather 
than  let  them  go  ahead  and  do  a  lot  of  damage  and 
compel  reputable  citizens  to  quit  their  regular  work 
of  selling  booze,  dealing  faro,  roulette  and  the  like 
and  go  out  and  hunt  them  up  and  hang  them,  and 
maybe  get  some  good  men  shot  up  in  the  course  of 
the  festivities. 

The  "professor"  demurred  against  this  radical  kind 
of  performance,  saying  that  of  course  he  would  not  like 
to  be  responsible  for  getting  some  man  hung  who  really 
hadn't  up  to  that  time  committed  any  crime  but  might 
perhaps  have  some  natural  tendencies  in  that  direc- 
tion. The  committee  only  became  the  more  insistent. 
They  said  that  they  had  been  waiting  for  him  for  a 


126  WHEN  KANSAS  WAS  YOUNG 

good  while.  They  declared  that  his  fame  had  pre- 
ceded him  and  that  the  whole  town  had  been  putting 
off  doing  anything  radical  until  he  came;  they  had 
understood,  they  said,  that  he  was  heading  that  way. 
Furthermore,  they  informed  him  that  now  that  he  was 
there  he  simply  couldn't  dodge  the  responsibility.  They 
intended  to  have  him  feel  a  lot  of  heads  and  tell  just 
what  was  in  them  and  if  he  didn't  do  it  there  were 
three  or  four  men  who  had  got  a  good  deal  worked 
up  and  anxious  who  might  take  a  shot  at  him.  The 
leader  of  the  committee,  Bat  Masterson,  said  that  of 
course  the  committee  would  do  what  they  could  to 
protect  him,  but  they  simply  couldn't  answer  for  his 
safety  if  he  refused  to  give  his  lecture.  On  the  other 
hand,  they  promised  that  if  he  would  lecture  they  would 
not  only  see  that  he  had  a  full  house  but  that  he  could 
proceed  without  interruption,  or  if  there  was  any  in- 
terruption and  gun  play  they  would  protect  him.  It 
was  a  serious  alternative,  but  on  the  whole  it  seemed 
to  the  "professor"  that  it  might  be  safer  to  go  ahead 
and  give  his  lecture  than  to  incur  the  hostility  of  the 
town  by  refusing  to  give  it. 

It  is  hardly  necessary  to  say  that  the  "professor" 
was  greeted  by  a  full  house.  There  were  a  number  of 
rather  disquieting  features  about  the  meeting.  For 
example,  the  hip  of  every  man  supported  a  six-shooter. 
He  was  conducted  to  the  platform  usually  occupied  by 
the  orchestra  which  furnished  the  music  for  the  dances. 
Bat  Masterson  presided  and  called  the  assembly  to  or- 
der. He  told  the  crowd  that  he  was  going  to  intro- 
duce to  them  "Professor ,"  who  probably  had  more 

knowledge  of  the  science  of  phrenology  than  any  other 
man  in  the  United  States,  and  who  could  tell  as  soon 
as  he  laid  his  hands  on  the  head  of  a  man  all  about  his 
disposition,  what  he  was  good  for,  what  kind  of  a 
man  his  great-grandfather  was ;  whether  he  was  a  cat- 


PICTURESQUE  FIGURES  127 

tie  rustler  or  an  honest  man ;  whether  he  would  bluff  on 
a  single  pair  or  lay  down  a  full  hand  with  queens  at 
the  top;  whether  he  was  concealing  the  fact  that  he 
had  a  Mexican  wife  down  on  the  trail — in  short,  could 
read  the  man  just  like  an  open  book. 

It  was  the  purpose  of  the  meeting,  said  Bat,  to  call 
out  some  of  the  leading  citizens  to  test  out  the  knowl- 
edge of  the  phrenologist,  and  after  that  to  have  him 
tell  about  some  men  they  had  been  wanting  to  know 
about,  "and,"  said  Bat,  as  he  drew  his  gun  and  twirled 
it  idly  on  his  finger,  "any  son-of-a-sea-cook  who  under- 
takes to  shoot  out  the  lights  while  the  'professor'  is 
speaking  will  get  his." 

The  "professor"  was  perspiring  freely  as  he  rose  to 
commence  his  lecture.  It  was  reasonably  clear  to  him 
that  no  matter  what  he  might  say  he  was  liable  to 
make  a  mistake  that  might  be  fatal.  He  dwelt  as  long 
as  possible  on  his  introduction,  told  the  crowd  what  he 
knew,  and  considerable  that  he  didn't  know  about  the 
science  of  phrenology,  until  there  were  signs  of  uneasi- 
ness and  one  long-haired  man  arose  to  say  that  it  was 
about  time  this  guy  was  getting  down  to  cases.  He 
said  so  far  as  he  knew  there  wasn't  a  man  in  the  crowd 
who  had  ever  seen  this  feller  whose  picture  the  "pro- 
fessor" was  showin',  with  his  head  divided  up  and  num- 
bered with  figures,  and  there  was  a  lot  of  doubt  about 
whether  there  was  such  a  feller.  What  they  wanted 
was  to  turn  this  "professor"  loose  on  a  man  every- 
body knowed  and  see  what  he  made  out  of  him  and 
they  didn't  propose  to  have  any  stalling  or  polly- 
foxing  about  it  either. 

Bat  ordered  the  long-haired  citizen  to  sit  down  until 
it  was  his  turn  to  play  and  then  announced  that  the 
"professor"  was  ready  to  examine  the  head  of  a  well- 
known  citizen.  As  a  matter  of  fact  the  professor  was 
not  ready,  but  he  did  not  dare  to  say  so  and  indicated 


128  WHEN  KANSAS  WAS  YOUNG 

that  if  any  gentleman  was  willing  to  submit  himself  he 
would  undertake  to  read  his  bumps.  Immediately  a 
well-known  gunman,  "Mysterious  Dave,"  I  think, 
stepped  forward  and  took  his  seat  on  the  platform. 
The  professor  had  a  hunch  that  his  subject  was  a  dan- 
gerous character  and  the  perspiration  increased. 

"This  gentleman,"  he  commenced  in  a  rather  uncer- 
tain voice,  "has  large  perceptive  faculties." 

"Cheese  it,  stranger,"  said  Dave,  as  he  rose  from 
the  chair  and  drew  his  gun.  "I  didn't  come  here  to 
be  insulted  by  no  damn  tenderfoot.  I  haven't  none  of 
them  things  you  mention  and  never  did." 

At  this  Bat  Masterson  drew  his  gun  and  ordered 
Mysterious  Dave  to  sit  down  and  have  his  head  felt, 
saying  that  the  professor  could  say  just  what  he 
pleased  and  if  there  was  to  be  any  gun  play  he,  Bat, 
would  take  a  hand. 

Immediately  the  crowd  began  to  take  sides  ;  part  with 
the  chairman  and  part  with  "Mysterious  Dave."  When 
a  few  words  had  passed,  one  of  the  supporters  of  the 
latter  commenced  to  shoot.  Masterson  answered 
promptly  with  his  gun  and  in  an  incredibly  short  time 
all  the  lights  were  shot  out  and  the  room  was  in  dark- 
ness except  for  the  flash  of  the  guns.  Bat  Masterson 
managed  to  convey  the  information  to  the  "professor" 
that  there  was  a  rear  exit  and  he  had  perhaps  better 
make  his  get-away  while  he,  Bat,  held  back  the  crowd. 
The  "professor"  needed  no  second  invitation.  It  was 
a  moderately  dark  night,  but  he  found  the  railroad 
track  and  headed  eastward.  He  was  a  weary  but  withal 
thankful  man  when  he  reached  the  first  station  this  side 
of  Dodge  and  lay  down  under  the  lee  of  the  friendly 
station  house,  to  wait  for  the  first  train  he  could  board 
that  would  carry  him  back  toward  civilization  and 
safety. 


PICTURESQUE  FIGURES  129 

The  Pioneer  Preacher 

The  other  day  in  running  over  some  old  newspaper 
files  I  noted  the  assignment  of  Methodist  preachers  for 
the  Lamed  district,  back  in  1879.  Among  the  num- 
ber was  Rev.  J.  A.  Mattern,  assigned  to  Medicine 
Lodge.  Mattern  really  started  the  Methodist  church 
in  Medicine  Lodge.  True,  there  were  a  few  Methodists 
among  the  early  settlers  and  occasionally  a  Meth- 
odist preacher  would  wander  out  that  way  and  hold 
services  in  the  old  frontier  schoolhouse,  but  to  Mattern 
must  be  given  the  credit  for  building  the  first  church 
and  getting  the  flock  together  as  a  permanent  con- 
gregation. Mattern  was  not  gifted  with  eloquent  dic- 
tion nor  was  his  mental  equipment  great.  It  may  be 
said  to  his  credit,  however,  that  he  did  not  pretend 
that  he  possessed  either.  He  was  just  an  humble  la- 
borer in  the  vineyard,  ready  to  go  anywhere  he  was 
sent  and  to  perform  without  complaint  any  drudgery 
that  might  be  imposed  upon  him. 

His  ambition  was  to  build  a  church  in  the  frontier 
town.  There  were  not  many  Methodists  there  and  what 
few  there  were,  were  not  possessed  of  much  wealth, 
but  that  fact  did  not  discourage  Mattern.  He  made 
arrangements  with  a  man  by  the  name  of  Hartzell 
to  burn  a  kiln  of  brick  to  be  used  in  making  the  walls 
of  the  church,  and  in  the  making  of  these  brick  he  made 
a  full  hand  and  more.  Day  after  day  he  shoveled  the 
mud  into  the  machine  which  ground  the  clay  and 
moulded  the  brick,  and  then  with  an  eager  industry  he 
helped  to  pile  the  moulded  brick  into  the  kiln.  At 
night  he  helped  to  keep  up  the  fires  until  at  last  the 
brick  was  burned.  Then  he  toiled  in  loading  the  brick 
into  wagons  and  hauling  them  to  the  site  for  the  future 
meeting  house.  When  it  came  to  building  the  church 
Mattern  was  the  most  industrious  and  efficient  man  on 


130  WHEN  KANSAS  WAS  YOUNG 

the  job,  so  far  as  tending  the  masons  was  concerned. 
All  day  long  he  carried  the  hod  with  no  thought  of 
financial  recompense  and  on  Sunday  conducted  the 
regular  services,  morning  and  evening.  His  sermons 
were  not  models  of  either  thought  or  diction,  but  the 
genuine  earnestness  and  conscientiousness  of  the  man 
won  him  many  friends  among  the  hardy  men  of  the 
frontier.  At  last  after  months  of  the  hardest  kind 
of  grueling  toil  the  ambition  of  the  humble  preacher 
was  realized.  The  church  was  completed  and  for  the 
first  time  Medicine  Lodge  boasted  of  a  house  of  wor- 
ship— and  the  church  was  made  of  brick. 

Rev.  Bernard  Kelly,  better  known  as  "Barney  Kelly," 
came  down  from  Wichita  to  conduct  the  dedication 
services  and  also  to  collect  the  money  necessary  to  lift 
the  debt  incurred  in  erecting  the  building.  At  that 
time,  forty  years  ago,  Barney  was  in  his  prime,  be- 
tween forty  and  fifty  years  of  age.  He  was  as  vigorous 
as  a  well-fed  two-year-old  colt  and  as  full  of  sap  as 
a  sugar  maple  tree  in  the  spring.  As  a  collector  of 
pledges  at  a  dedication  he  had  few  equals  and  no 
superiors.  He  seemed  to  exercise  a  sort  of  hypnotic 
influence  on  men  who  were  natural  tightwads,  and  un- 
der the  spell  of  his  vigorous  appeal  they  would  obli- 
gate themselves  to  an  extent  which  astonished  their 
neighbors  and  which  probably  caused  them  some  regret 
after  they  had  come  out  from  under  the  influence  which 
induced  them  to  make  the  promise. 

On  the  day  of  the  dedication  the  new  church  was 
crowded  to  the  doors,  and  Reverend  Barney  was  at 
his  best.  I  think  I  never  saw  a  man  perspire  so 
freely  or  with  more  effect.  Those  who  are  acquainted 
with  this  well  known  divine  know  that  a  distinguishing 
feature  of  his  countenance  is  a  nose  of  Grecian  archi- 
tecture and  rather  remarkable  length.  As  he  warmed 
to  his  work  he  left  the  pulpit  proper  and  paced  back 


PICTURESQUE  FIGURES  131 

and  forth  just  behind  the  altar  rail.  The  perspira- 
tion trickled  from  the  end  of  his  olfactory  organ  like 
sugar  water  dripping  from  the  spile  in  a  fresh  tapped 
maple  tree  and  splashed  on  the  heads  of  those  who 
had  been  crowded  into  the  front  row.  A  baldheaded 
man  or  two  who  happened  to  be  crowded  up  against 
the  outer  edge  of  the  altar  rail,  protested  mildly 
against  the  involuntary  baptism,  but  for  the  most  part 
the  audience  was  so  interested  in  the  fervent  appeal  that 
they  paid  no  attention  to  the  gentle  shower  of  perspira- 
tion and  felt,  no  doubt,  that  they  were  simply  sitting, 
as  it  were,  under  "the  drippings  of  the  sanctuary.'* 

At  that  time  I  was  young  and  single  and  not  affili- 
ated with  the  Methodist  church  or  any  other,  but  had 
been  attracted  to  the  service,  perhaps  largely  through 
curiosity.  Rev.  Barney  Kelly  did  not  know  me,  but 
some  one  had  pointed  me  out  to  him  as  the  editor  of 
the  town  paper.  I  had  taken  a  seat  pretty  well  back 
beside  one  of  the  young  matrons  of  the  town,  who 
was  accompanied  by  an  active  and  interesting  child 
about  two  years  old.  The  baby  thought  I  looked 
friendly  and  climbing  up  on  my  lap  was  busily  engaged 
in  examining  my  neck-tie  of  somewhat  loud  and  inhar- 
monious pattern. 

Pledges  were  commencing  to  come  thick  and  fast 
when  it  suddenly  occurred  to  Elder  Kelly  that  there 
was  no  secretary  to  make  a  record  of  them.  Looking 
over  the  crowd,  he  said:  "Here,  we  must  have  a  sec- 
retary. I  see  brother  McNeal,  the  young  editor  of 
your  local  paper,  sitting  back  there.  Here,  brother 
McNeal,  just  put  your  child  over  on  its  mother's  lap 
and  come  forward  and  take  down  these  subscriptions." 

In  a  frontier  town  and  neighborhood  everybody 
knows  everybody  else  and  all  of  them  knew  me.  In- 
stantly that  house  of  worship  was  filled  with  unholy 
mirth,  the  loud  and  coarse  laughter  of  the  rude  men 


132  WHEN  KANSAS  WAS  YOUNG 

from  the  range,  mingling  with  the  shrill  cachinations 
of  the  female  part  of  the  audience.  Personally  I  did 
not  join  in  the  hilarity  and  neither  did  the  mother  of 
the  baby,  but  we  two  formed  the  entire  minority.  Bar- 
ney saw  that  he  had  made  a  mistake  but  was  not 
dashed  in  the  least,  only  remarking  that  if  brother 
McNeal  was  not  married  he  ought  to  be  and  then 
returned  to  the  work  in  hand :  "Who  is  the  next  brother 
who  wants  to  have  the  privilege  of  subscribing  $50?" 

During  the  years  which  have  come  and  gone  since 
that  day,  the  Rev.  Barney  Kelly  has  told  this  story 
frequently  and  with  great  enjoyment,  but  I  have  ob- 
served that  in  later  years  he  is  getting  his  dates  mixed. 
The  last  time  I  heard  him  tell  the  story  he  said  that 
on  that  occasion  he  met  the  town  marshal,  Jerry 
Simpson,  who  introduced  himself  and  said:  "I  suppose 
you  are  brother  Kelly  who  has  come  down  to  dedicate 
our  church?" 

Barney  said  that  he  was  much  impressed  with  the 
appearance  of  Jerry  and  told  the  Republican  politi- 
cians when  Jerry  was  nominated  for  Congress  that  he 
was  a  dangerous  opponent  and  that  unless  they  put  up 
a  great  campaign  he  would  be  elected.  The  fact  was, 
however,  that  Jerry  did  not  come  to  the  county  for 
three  years  after  the  church  was  dedicated  and  was 
not  appointed  town  marshal  for  ten  years  after  the 
dedication,  and  furthermore  Jerry  was  a  well  known 
heretic  both  in  politics  and  religion  who  didn't  care  a 
hoot  whether  there  was  any  church. 

In  reading  over  this  story  I  observe  that  the  Rev. 
Mr.  Mattern  seems  to  have  sort  of  faded  out  of  it,  but 
that  really  was  characteristic  of  the  man.  He  was 
ready  any  time  to  efface  himself,  glad  of  the  oppor- 
tunity to  be  just  an  humble  gleaner  in  the  vineyard. 
I  have  often  wondered  what  has  become  of  him. 


PICTURESQUE  FIGURES  133 

An  Early-Day  Murder  and  Man  Hunt 

In  the  spring  of  1878,  George  W.  Bowyer,  a  farmer 
and  stockman,  of  Sumner  County,  accompanied  by  his 
wife,  her  sister,  and  a  Texan  who  just  then  went  by 
the  name  of  Charlie  Lee,  started  for  Texas  to  bujr 
a  herd  of  cattle.  At  Coles  City,  Texas,  Bowyer  pur- 
chased 350  head  of  cattle  and  headed  north  for  his 
Sumner  County  pasture  with  the  party  made  up  as 
it  was  when  they  left  Kansas.  Bowyer  did  not  know 
that  his  herder  was  an  ex-convict,  who  had  served 
at  least  one  term  in  the  Texas  penitentiary.  If  he 
had,  he  perhaps  would  not  have  employed  him  and  he 
might  have  saved  his  own  life.  However,  in  those 
days  it  was  not  the  custom  to  inquire  closely  into 
the  past  lives  of  men,  especially  when  employing  herd- 
ers for  the  Texas  trail. 

Lee  seems  to  have  been  a  hardened  criminal  with 
no  sense  of  shame.  Mrs.  Bowyer  complained  to  her 
husband  of  Lee's  conduct,  especially  as  it  related  to 
the  other  woman.  The  only  effect  of  this  on  Lee  was 
to  excite  his  enmity  toward  Mrs.  Bowyer  and  elicit 
the  threat  that  he  intended  to  get  even.  He  also  con- 
fided to  the  other  herder  that  when  they  reached  a 
certain  point  in  the  territory,  he,  Lee,  intended  to 
kill  Bowyer,  take  possession  of  the  herd  of  cattle,  drive 
them  back  to  Texas,  sell  them,  and  appropriate  the 
money.  The  threat  was  communicated  to  Bowyer,  who, 
when  they  reached  the  place  in  the  territory  mentioned 
by  Lee,  faced  the  desperado  and  demanded  that  he 
disarm  or  leave  camp.  If  Bowyer  had  been  entirely 
conversant  with  the  habits  of  desperadoes,  he  would 
not  have  made  the  demand  except  at  the  point  of  a 
gun.  The  lack  of  this  precaution  cost  him  his  life. 
The  ex-convict  was  a  trifle  quicker  on  the  draw  and 
a  better  shot  than  Bowyer,  who  fell  dead  in  the  arms 


134  WHEN  KANSAS  WAS  YOUNG 

of  his  wife,  a  bullet  through  his  brain.  Not  satisfied 
with  this,  Lee  fired  two  more  shots  into  the  dead  body. 

Other  campers  located  near  by  heard  the  shooting, 
came  to  the  camp  of  the  Bowyers,  and  helped  the  deso- 
lated wife  to  bury  her  dead  by  the  side  of  the  trail, 
while  Lee,  with  almost  incomparable  insolence  and 
bravado,  took  charge  of  the  herd  of  the  man  he  had 
murdered,  in  spite  of  the  protests  of  the  widow.  Ar- 
riving at  Pond  Creek,  Lee  seems  to  have  changed  his 
mind,  abandoned  the  herd  and  rode  on  to  Kansas,  still 
brazenly  indifferent  about  the  crime  he  had  committed 
until  the  news  was  conveyed  to  him  that  an  impromptu 
vigilance  committee  of  Bowyer's  neighbors  were  pre- 
paring to  hang  him.  Hearing  this,  Lee  fled. 

Then  commenced  one  of  the  most  prolonged  and 
remarkable  man  hunts  in  the  history  of  the  frontier. 
Joe  Thralls  was  then  a  young  man  of  Herculean  build, 
with  a  wide  knowledge  of  the  western  country  and  of 
frontier  character.  He  made  no  pretensions  of  being 
a  great  detective,  and  was  not  given  to  spectacular 
methods,  but  he  possessed  what  is  known  as  bulldog 
tenacity  and  courage.  He  set  out  with  one  purpose 
in  mind  and  that  was  to  find  the  desperado,  Lee,  and 
bring  him  to  justice.  Time  and  the  difficulties  in  the 
way  did  not  daunt  or  trouble  him.  It  might  be  a  year ; 
it  might  be  two  before  he  would  run  the  murderer  to 
earth,  but  he  had  no  doubt  whatever  that  he  would 
get  him  in  the  end. 

For  nine  months  the  big,  quiet  young  frontiersman 
kept  on  the  trail  of  the  murderer.  He  traced  him 
through  the  Flint  hills  and  nearly  captured  him  in  the 
neighborhood  of  Independence,  but  Lee  managed  to  slip 
out  of  the  trap  and  into  the  hills  of  southern  Mis- 
souri. Thralls  chased  him  out  of  there,  back  into  Kan- 
sas; across  the  plains  into  Colorado;  through  the 
mountains  and  desert  lands  down  into  New  Mexico ; 


PICTURESQUE  FIGURES  135 

across  the  border  into  old  Mexico.  Back  the  fugitive 
turned  and  again  crossed  the  border,  this  time  into 
Texas,  with  Thralls  still  following  with  dogged  per- 
sistence. Sometimes  for  a  little  while  he  would  lose 
the  trail  for  a  day  or  two,  only  to  find  it  again  and 
hunt  the  fugitive  from  one  hiding-place  to  another. 
The  Texan  managed  to  reach  the  cattle  camps  of 
the  Panhandle  of  Texas,  then  an  ideal  hiding-place  for 
men  of  his  stripe.  In  a  cattle  camp  he  supposed  that 
he  was  securely  hidden,  but  somehow  the  young  deputy 
marshal  located  him.  It  meant  a  ride  of  hundreds  of 
miles  through  an  almost  trackless  wilderness  and  alone. 
It  was  a  journey  beset  with  danger,  but  there  was  no 
hesitation.  There  was  a  certain  fascination  in  the 
business  of  keeping  order  along  the  border.  It  was  a 
life  crowded  full  of  adventure  and  danger.  The  man 
hunter  never  knew  what  odds  he  might  have  to  meet 
or  at  what  moment  he  might  be  looking  in  the  muzzle 
of  a  gun  held  by  some  one  of  the  men  he  was  hunting; 
men  who  had  no  regard  for  human  life,  who  would  kill 
him  with  as  little  compunction  as  they  would  kill  a  dog. 
Men  of  the  type  of  Thralls,  however,  did  not  hesitate 
on  account  of  the  hardships  or  dangers.  They  seemed 
rather  to  welcome  them.  The  life  would  have  been  per- 
haps unbearably  lonesome  if  it  had  not  been  full  of 
danger.  I  suppose  it  was  this  feeling  that  impelled 
Joe  Thralls  to  ride  thousands  of  miles  through  almost 
trackless  mountains  and  over  burning  deserts  on  the 
trail  of  a  man  who  he  knew  would  kill  him  without 
hesitation  or  warning  if  he  believed  he  could  do  it 
and  escape. 

Just  how  Joe  Thralls  escaped  he  does  not  know,  but 
somehow  he  did  and  just  ten  months  after  the  Sum- 
ner  County  ranchman,  Bowyer,  had  fallen  dead  in  the 
arms  of  his  wife,  the  big  deputy  marshal  walked  into 
a  cow  camp  near  the  Panhandle  border,  covered  Lee 


136  WHEN  KANSAS  WAS  YOUNG 

with  his  gun,  quietly  told  him  he  was  his  prisoner,  put 
the  irons  upon  him,  and  started  back  on  the  long  ride 
to  Sumner  County,  Kansas.  Lee  was  sent  to  Fort 
Smith  for  trial  and  managed  somehow  to  get  off  with 
a  sentence  of  ten  years  for  second  degree  murder.  In 
the  course  of  three  or  four  years  he  was  pardoned 
out.  Of  his  further  history  I  have  no  record.  He  prob- 
ably either  managed  to  break  into  some  other  peniten- 
tiary or  get  himself  killed  in  some  frontier  brawl. 

There  was  a  curious  aftermath  of  this  tragedy  of 
the  trail.  The  body  of  Bowyer  was  buried  temporarily 
on  the  north  bank  of  the  Red  River.  Several  months 
afterward  his  widow  made  arrangements  to  have  the 
body  taken  up  and  moved  to  the  home  burying  ground 
in  Sumner  County.  When  the  body  was  exhumed  it 
was  found,  to  the  astonishment  of  those  who  dug  it  up, 
to  be  in  an  almost  complete  state  of  petrifaction  and 
weighed  about  seven  hundred  pounds. 


A  Partisan  Tombstone 

In  these  days  when  party  ties  are  so  loosened  that 
it  is  next  to  impossible  to  find  a  man  who  does  not 
scratch  his  ticket,  it  is  hard  to  realize  the  rigid  par- 
tisanship of  only  a  third  of  a  century  ago.  In  those 
old  days,  the  man  who  scratched  his  ticket  was  re- 
garded as  a  political  heretic  and  traitor  to  his  party. 
All  the  party  bosses  had  to  do  was  to  see  that  the 
ticket  was  fixed  up  to  their  liking  and  the  rank  and 
file  could  be  depended  upon  to  vote  it  straight. 

Among  the  hardy  and  estimable  men  who  settled 
in  Barber  County  on  the  edge  of  Harper  County  back 
in  the  late  seventies  or  early  eighties  were  Nathaniel 
Grigsby  and  his  son,  Elias  Grigsby.  The  names  indi- 
cate the  Puritan  strain  in  the  Grigsby  blood.  If  they 


PICTURESQUE  FIGURES  137 

had  lived  in  the  days  of  Cromwell  they  would  have  been 
followers  of  that  remarkable  man,  who  organized  an 
army  of  religious  fanatics,  the  most  dauntless  fighters 
who  ever  followed  a  leader  in  battle.  Born  in  1811, 
when  the  Civil  War  broke  out  Nathaniel  Grigsby,  al- 
though even  then  well  beyond  the  military  age, 
promptly  joined  the  colors  and  together  with  his  son  or 
sons,  fought  through  the  war,  rising  to  the  rank  of 
second  lieutenant.  Nathaniel  Grigsby  was  a  man  of 
positive  convictions,  religiously  and  politically. 

He  was  a  Republican  without  variableness  or  shadow 
of  turning.  To  his  mind,  politically  speaking,  the  Re- 
publican party  was  summum  bonum,  while  the  Demo- 
cratic party  was  malum  in  se.  Whatever  there  was  of 
good  in  the  political  acts  of  the  past  third  of  a  cen- 
tury, he  attributed  to  the  Republican  party,  and  what- 
ever there  was  of  evil  to  the  malign  influence  of  the 
Democratic  organization.  With  most  men  political  ac- 
tivity stops  with  the  grave,  but  old  Nathaniel  Grigsby, 
as  the  weight  of  years  bowed  his  back  and  the  frosts  of 
time  silvered  his  hair,  knowing  that  his  years  were 
nearly  numbered,  devised  a  plan  by  which  his  political 
opinions  might  be  transmitted  to  coming  generations, 
carved  in  imperishable  granite,  to  be  read  long  after 
his  mortal  body  had  returned  to  the  earth  from  which 
it  came  and  his  spirit  had  joined  the  immortals.  He 
carefully  prepared  the  inscription  for  his  tombstone 
and  exacted  the  promise  that  it  should  be  graven  on 
the  shaft  which  marked  his  grave. 

In  the  quiet  graveyard  near  the  little  town  of  Attica 
lies  the  body  of  Nathaniel  Grigsby  and  on  the  head- 
stone the  curious  observer  may  read  these  words : 

"N.  Grigsby,  2d  Liu't  Co.  G,  10th  Indiana  Volunteers. 
Died  April  16,  18QO.  Age  78  years,  6  months  and  5  days." 

"Through  this  inscription  I  wish  to  enter  my  dying 
protest  against  what  is  called  the  Democratic  party.  I 
have  watched  it  closely  since  the  days  of  Jackson  and 


138  WHEN  KANSAS  WAS  YOUNG 

know  that  all  the  misfortunes  of  our  nation  have  come  to 
it  through  this  so-called  party  of  treason." 

Below  this  inscription  is  added  a  postscript  which 
says,  "This  inscription  is  placed  here  by  the  request 
of  the  deceased." 

Hardly  had  the  clods  fallen  on  the  coffin  of  old  Na- 
thaniel Grigsby  before  the  state  of  Kansas  was  shaken 
by  a  political  upheaval  which  for  the  time  being  de- 
stroyed the  Democratic  party  in  the  state  as  an  organi- 
zation and  reduced  the  Republican  party  to  a  minority 
in  Kansas,  the  stronghold  of  its  power.  If  the  disem- 
bodied spirit  of  the  old  veteran  was  able  to  view  the 
things  of  earth  from  another  world  he  must  have 
viewed  with  astonishment  the  political  revolution  which 
swept  over  the  state  of  his  adoption  and  observed  the 
strange  political  bedfellows  resulting.  Had  he  lived 
a  quarter  of  a  century  longer  he  would  have  witnessed 
the  passing  of  the  old  political  order,  the  loosening  of 
party  bonds,  and  the  framing  of  party  platforms  so 
nearly  alike  in  all  essentials  that  with  the  changing  of 
heads  and  a  few  stock  phrases,  one  might  have  been 
substituted  for  the  other  and  each  supported  with  equal 
enthusiasm.  Perhaps  the  old  soldier  would  have 
changed  with  the  times,  and  if  so  a  different  inscription 
would  have  been  carved  upon  his  granite  monument. 

As  it  is,  I  doubt  that  a  search  of  all  the  graveyards 
from  Maine  to  California  would  reveal  so  unique  and 
peculiar  an  epitaph. 


The  Gambler  Who  Tempted  Fate 

There  are  still  old-timers  living  who  remember  Bob 
Louden,  the  gambler,  who  operated  in  most  of  the  fron- 
tier towns  back  in  the  early  seventies.  They  speak 
of  him  as  a  king  among  his  class.  Handsome,  mag- 


PICTURESQUE  FIGURES  139 

nificently  proportioned,  reckless,  and  vain,  he  was  the 
sort  of  man  who  appealed  to  women  of  sentimental 
turn  of  mind:  the  kind  of  man  for  whom  some  foolish 
girl  would  sacrifice  her  honor  and  endure  abuse  in  or- 
der that  she  might  enjoy  his  capricious  and  temporary 
favor.  The  gambler  of  the  Bob  Louden  type  was  never 
constant  in  his  attachments.  His  liaisons  were 
prompted  by  passion  and  caprice  and  when  another 
woman  attracted  his  attention  and  suited  his  fancy,  he 
cast  off  the  former  companion  with  no  more  compunc- 
tion than  he  would  have  in  discarding  a  worn  out 
garment. 

With  the  women  of  his  class  it  was  often  different. 
Very  often  one  of  them  would  shower  upon  the  reck- 
less and  dissolute  companion  a  love  and  devotion  which 
were  tragic  and  pitiful.  She  would  endure  for  him  all 
kinds  of  abuse ;  slave  for  him,  turn  over  to  him  the  reve- 
nues of  her  sin  and  only  ask  in  return  the  poor  privi- 
lege of  basking  in  his  smiles  and  his  occasional  com- 
panionship. Sometimes,  however,  the  gambler  pre- 
sumed too  much  on  his  power  over  the  woman  and  her 
dog-like  devotion.  When  she  became  convinced  that 
he  had  cast  her  off,  she  was  likely  to  become  filled  with 
a  fierce  jealousy  that  would  stop  at  no  crime  in  order 
to  satisfy  her  desire  for  vengeance. 

According  to  the  opinions  of  those  who  knew  her,  one 
of  the  most  striking  appearing  women  of  the  under 
world  in  the  city  of  Cincinnati  during  the  year  1870 
or  1871  was  one  known  by  the  name  of  Carrie  Baxter. 
Quite  likely  that  was  not  her  real  name,  but  it  was  the 
one  by  which  she  was  known.  Tall,  voluptuous  and 
dowered  with  almost  classic  features,  she  walked  a  queen 
among  the  women  of  her  class.  Bob  Louden,  the  gam- 
bler, was  attracted  by  her  beauty,  her  tigerish  grace, 
and  her  ability.  She  was  equally  attracted  by  him. 
Together  they  journeyed  to  the  new  city  of  Omaha, 


140  WHEN  KANSAS  WAS  YOUNG 

where  Bob  plied  his  trade  in  the  frontier  gambling 
places  and  his  companion  became  the  most  skillful  shop- 
lifter who  had  ever  operated  in  the  then  frontier,  now 
the  great  middle  West. 

What  caused  the  break  between  them  is  not  known, 
or  at  any  rate  was  not  generally  told.  Perhaps  he 
grew  tired  of  her  as  he  had  grown  tired  of  many 
others.  Possibly  there  came  to  her  mind  the  possi- 
bility of  reformation  and  restoration  to  a  place  in 
society  such  as  her  natural  ability  and  beauty  fitted  her 
to  fill.  At  any  rate  they  separated.  She  went  to 
Denver,  where  she  got  a  place  as  saleswoman  in  a  dry 
goods  store  and  afterward  became  a  delivery  clerk  in 
the  postoffice. 

The  monotony,  however,  palled  on  her.  She  began 
to  long  for  the  bright  lights  and  excitement  of  the 
old  life  she  had  forsaken,  and  quit  her  job,  but  not 
to  become  merely  an  inmate  of  some  gilded  palace  of 
sin.  Her  idea  was  to  lead  a  more  profitable  and 
independent  career  as  a  confidence  woman,  setting  her 
net  to  catch  the  foolish  fish  among  the  human  kind. 

How  she  happened  to  land  in  Hays  City,  I  do  not 
know,  perhaps  because  at  that  time  it  was  the  loca- 
tion of  one  of  the  important  army  posts  and  because 
for  one  reason  and  another  there  had  been  attracted 
there  a  good  many  men  in  search  of  adventure,  some 
of  them  reckless,  degenerate  sons  of  rich  sires,  some 
merely  young  fools  who  had  money  but  were  lacking 
in  brains  and  judgment. 

The  ex-shoplifter  and  once  leader  of  the  Cincinnati 
demimonde  played  her  part  well.  She  was  no  common 
street  walker  painted  and  bedizened,  parading  her 
charms  and  soliciting  patronage  from  the  passing 
stranger.  She  was,  on  the  contrary,  a  woman  of  strik- 
ing appearance  who  carried  herself  with  reserve  and 
dignity  and  in  that  frontier  town  where  no  inquiries 


PICTURESQUE  FIGURES  141 

were  made  concerning  past  records  or  antecedents, 
she  seems  to  have  been  admitted  into  the  best  society. 

The  hotel  proprietor  gave  a  ball,  to  which  were  in- 
vited the  elite  of  the  town:  the  officers  from  the  mili- 
tary post,  dressed  in  the  ornate,  striking  uniforms 
worn  by  army  officers  of  that  time;  the  rich  adven- 
turers, some  of  them  the  sons  of  titled  Englishmen; 
and  the  rest  of  the  upper  crust  of  frontier  society.  To 
this  ball  was  also  invited  the  ex-shoplifter  and  former 
leader  of  the  underworld  of  Cincinnati.  Sailing  under 
another  name,  regal  in  her  grace  and  animal  beauty,  she 
was  the  most  striking  figure  among  the  company  gath- 
ered in  the  parlors  of  the  frontier  hostelry. 

Social  lines  were  not  closely  drawn  and  there  was 
no  surprise  manifested  because  some  well  known  gam- 
blers were  also  among  the  guests.  Of  these  no  one 
was  more  striking  than  the  tall,  handsome  gambler, 
Bob  Louden.  His  former  paramour,  it  seemed,  had  not 
known  that  he  was  in  Hays  City;  possibly  he  did  not 
know  until  he  came  to  the  ball  that  she  was  there.  If 
he  had  been  wise  enough  to  make  no  demonstration, 
there  would  have  been  no  tragedy,  but  he  had  been 
imbibing  rather  freely  for  him,  not  an  altogether  com- 
mon thing,  for  like  most  professional  gamblers  he  did 
not  usually  drink  to  excess.  He  may  also  have  con- 
cluded that  it  would  be  a  satisfaction  to  humiliate 
publicly  this  woman  who  had  been  his  one-time  partner 
in  crime  and  also  his  willing  slave.  He  sought  her  out. 
Her  face  paled,  but  she  did  not  quail,  for  she  was  a 
creature  of  magnificent  control.  Then  Bob  Louden 
made  the  fatal  mistake  of  flouting  her  in  public  and 
with  insulting  language  calling  attention  to  her  former 
relations  and  her  shame.  Suddenly  her  hand  slipped 
into  the  pocket  of  her  dress,  where  she  carried  a  small 
derringer.  There  was  a  blinding  flash,  a  loud  report, 
and  Bob  Louden,  the  gambler,  fell  dead  with  a  bullet 


142  WHEN  KANSAS  WAS  YOUNG 

through  his  heart.  There  was  a  trial  of  some  kind 
at  which  the  woman  was  promptly  acquitted,  for  ac- 
cording to  the  code  of  the  border,  she  was  justified. 
According  to  border  justice  the  gambler  had  brought 
this  on  himself  and  had  to  take  the  consequence.  He 
had  no  business  to  interrupt  the  festivities  of  the  occa- 
sion by  calling  up  old  relationships  and  insulting  the 
woman  who,  to  say  the  least,  was  no  worse  than  he. 
So  they  buried  Bob  Louden  and  let  the  woman  go. 

It  was  perhaps  a  year  after  the  trial  that  two  men 
were  standing  on  one  of  the  streets  of  Atchison  when 
a  tall,  well-groomed  woman  passed  them.  "What  a 
striking  looking  woman,"  exclaimed  one  of  the  men. 

"By  she  looks  like  a  goddess  and  moves  like  a 

queen." 

"I  might  also  add,"  said  the  other  man  dryly,  "that 
she  shoots  as  straight  as  she  stands.  That  is  the  woman 
who  put  a  bullet  through  the  heart  of  Bob  Louden,  the 
gambler  and  gunman,  at  the  Hays  City  society  ball." 


Pete  and  Ben 

The  business  of  the  cattle  ranges  developed  a  class 
of  nomads,  carefree,  reckless,  taking  little  or  no 
thought  for  the  morrow.  The  range  had  certain  un- 
written rules  of  hospitality  that  made  it  permissible 
for  an  entire  stranger  to  stop  at  any  cattle  camp  at 
mealtime,  unsaddle  his  horse  and  either  "hobble"  it  or 
"lariat"  it  on  the  prairie  or  even  give  it  a  feed  of  corn 
if  it  needed  it,  and  then,  without  question  or  objection, 
"sit  in"  and  help  himself  to  "grub."  All  the  nomad 
needed  in  way  of  an  outfit  was  a  horse,  saddle  and  sad- 
dle blankets,  a  bridle,  quirt  and  lariat  rope.  Money 
was  not  necessary,  as  he  did  not  expect  to  pay  for 
what  he  got  in  the  way  of  food  or  lodging,  but  if  he 


PICTURESQUE  FIGURES  143 

wanted  a  job  he  could  generally  get  it  as  a  line  rider. 

Typical  of  this  class  were  two  brothers,  Pete  and 
Ben  Lampton.  Sometimes  they  worked ;  generally  they 
did  not,  but  there  was  never  any  indication  of  worry 
over  their  financial  condition.  Pete,  the  elder,  was 
a  companionable  sort  of  hobo,  a  most  cheerful  liar, 
never  at  a  loss  for  conversation,  void  of  conscience 
as  a  coyote,  and  with  the  gall  of  a  lightning-rod  ped- 
dler. Ben  was  of  duller  mentality,  and  followed  the 
plans  originated  by  Pete  instead  of  doing  his  own 
thinking.  In  1874  there  was  an  Indian  scare  along  the 
border.  There  generally  was,  for  that  matter.  In 
fact,  the  cattle  men  saw  to  it  that  if  there  were  no 
genuine  Indian  scare,  one  was  manufactured,  in  order 
to  discourage  the  immigration  of  grangers  to  spoil  the 
free  range. 

In  1874  there  seemed  to  be  some  actual  danger  of 
an  outbreak  and  a  militia  company  was  organized  at 
Medicine  Lodge  to  protect  the  border.  It  was  a  com- 
pany of  mounted  scouts,  each  one  of  whom  was  sup- 
posed to  furnish  his  own  horse  and  bedding,  the  state 
furnishing  the  arms  and  food,  with  an  understanding 
that  the  members  of  the  company  would  be  compen- 
sated for  outfits  furnished.  Among  those  who  joined 
was  Pete  Lampton;  not  that  he  was  concerned  about 
protecting  the  border,  but  it  meant  free  grub  for  a 
time  and  possibly  some  adventure. 

At  the  time  the  company  was  organized,  the  days 
were  reasonably  warm,  but  the  nights  were  often  un- 
comfortably cool.  Another  member  of  the  company 
was  one  M.  Palmer,  who  resided  near  the  head  waters 
of  Bitter  Creek  and  who  had  been  a  soldier  in  the 
Civil  War.  Palmer  was  not  abundantly  supplied  with 
bedding  and  when  it  came  time  to  camp  for  the  night, 
he  called  out,  asking  who  wanted  to  bunk  with  him.  "I 
am  your  huckleberry,"  answered  Pete  Lampton. 


144  WHEN  KANSAS  WAS  YOUNG 

Palmer  spread  down  such  bedding  as  he  had  while 
Pete  stood  by,  a  rather  indifferent  onlooker.  "Well," 
said  Palmer,  "where  are  your  blankets?" 

"Blankets?"  said  Pete;  "I  haven't  any  blankets.  If 
I  had  blankets  of  my  own,  why  the  hell  do  you  suppose 
I  would  want  to  sleep  with  you?" 

Once  when  the  Lampton  brothers  happened  to  have 
cash  and  were  camping  in  the  grove  at  the  edge  of  town, 
Pete  bought  a  dozen  eggs  at  the  store  kept  by  one  D.  E. 
Sheldon,  for  twenty-five  cents.  In  the  course  of  an 
hour  or  two  he  came  back  and  gravely  handed  Sheldon 
$2.25.  Asked  for  an  explanation,  he  said,  "all  them 
eggs  had  chickens  in  'em  and  my  understanding  is  that 
spring  chickens  are  worth  $2.50  a  dozen.  I  ain't  aimin' 
to  take  no  advantage  of  you,  Sheldon,  and  here  is 
the  chicken  price." 


EVENTS  IN   THE  EIGHTIES 

A  Fake  Election 

THE  inhabitants  of  a  frontier  town  100  miles  re- 
moved from  a  railroad,  were  necessarily  deprived 
of  the  ordinary  opportunities  for  entertainment 
and  as  a  result  compelled  to  rely  on  their  own  resources. 
This  developed  an  originality  that  I  have  never  seen 
equaled  in  any  old  settled  community.  The  individual 
who  proposed  some  new  practical  joke  always  found 
an  abundance  of  enthusiastic  assistants  to  carry  it 
into  effect  and  if  the  joke  panned  out  as  anticipated, 
the  originator  was  regarded  as  a  public  benefactor. 
Among  the  earliest  settlers  in  the  Elm  Creek  val- 
ley was  Jacob  Frazier,  a  Missourian  by  birth,  who  for 
some  inscrutable  reason  had  been  induced  to  migrate 
from  the  land  of  his  nativity,  to  the  then  almost  un- 
inhabited frontier.  Jake  was  possessed  neither  of  any 
"book  laming,"  nor  of  a  capacity  to  have  acquired 
any  considerable  amount  if  he  had  had  the  opportu- 
nity. Politically  he  was  a  Democrat,  without  variable- 
ness or  shadow  of  turning,  and  did  not  believe  in  mix- 
ing either  his  whisky  or  his  politics.  True,  Jake  did 
not  manifest  much  interest  in  politics  except  to  vote 
on  election  day.  He  did  not  trouble  himself  about  po- 
litical issues,  in  fact  would  not  have  recognized  a  po- 
litical issue  if  he  had  met  it  in  the  middle  of  the 
road ;  all  he  asked  was  to  be  handed  a  Democratic  bal- 
lot and  the  privilege  of  depositing  it  in  the  box. 

145 


146  WHEN  KANSAS  WAS  YOUNG 

It  was  when  St.  John  was  still  the  leader  of  the 
Republican  political  machine  in  Kansas,  the  valiant  and 
most  noted  apostle  of  the  then  new  doctrine  of  con- 
stitutional prohibition,  that  Jake  Frazier  for  some  rea- 
son failed  for  once  to  get  to  the  election  and  cast  his 
vote.  This  omission  was  the  more  remarkable  because 
for  once  Jake  had  more  than  a  mere  inherited  interest 
in  the  election.  The  Democratic  party  was  opposed 
to  prohibition  and  that  stand  met  with  his  entire  and 
enthusiastic  approval.  The  attempt  of  St.  John  and 
the  Republican  party  to  deprive  a  man  of  his  "licker," 
he  regarded  as  a  most  diabolical  attack  on  his  inalien- 
able rights,  and  the  mere  mention  of  it  caused  him 
to  fairly  boil  with  indignation,  the  boiling  being  ma- 
terially hastened  by  several  drinks.  But  for  some  rea- 
son on  that  fall  day  Jake  failed  to  appear  and  cast 
his  vote.  The  following  day  he  came  to  town  and, 
being  asked  why  he  had  failed  to  come  and  vote,  ex- 
pressed his  regret  earnestly  and  profanely,  "Specially 
as  he  wanted  to  vote  agin  this  here  damn  prohibitioner 
law." 

"Well,  it  was  too  bad,"  said  his  interviewer,  "that 
you  couldn't  get  in  yesterday,  but  it's  all  right  anyway, 
as  we  are  going  to  have  another  election  to-day  and 
you  can  vote  just  the  same." 

Jake  was  surprised  but  delighted,  and  wanted  to 
know  where  the  election  was  being  held.  He  was  di- 
rected to  the  livery  stable,  where  he  found  what  they 
told  him  was  the  election  board  and  a  couple  of  clerks, 
also  a  cigar  box  to  receive  the  ballots.  A  number  of 
citizens  came  in  and  deposited  their  ballots,  several  of 
them  being  challenged  on  one  ground  and  another, 
which  challenges  caused  considerable  bickering  and 
threats  of  violence  on  the  part  of  the  challenged.  Jake 
wanted  to  know  where  he  could  get  a  Democratic  bal- 
lot and  was  furnished  with  an  unused  ballot  of  the 


EVENTS  IN  THE  EIGHTIES  147 

previous  day;  that  was  before  the  day  of  the  Aus- 
tralian ballot. 

He  came  up  and  offered  his  vote  to  one  of  the  judges, 
a  man  whom  he  had  known  for  jears,  and  was  sur- 
prised to  be  asked  to  state  his  name,  age,  where  he 
was  born,  what  was  his  wife's  name,  age,  and  color  of 
her  hair;  if  his  mother-in-law  was  still  living  and  if 
so  where  and  why ;  if  he  kept  any  dogs  and  what  church 
if  any  he  belonged  to.  As  the  questions  were  asked 
with  the  greatest  gravity  Jake's  indignation  grew  in 
volume.  He  called  the  attention  of  the  election  judge 
to  the  fact  that  he  had  been  personally  acquainted 
with  him  for  years  and  knew  all  about  him  "without 
askin'  all  these  damn  fool  questions." 

Finally  the  election  judges  seemed  to  be  satisfied  in 
regard  to  his  qualifications  and  were  about  to  receive 
his  ballot  when  one  of  the  framers  of  the  play  stepped 
up  and  declared  that  he  challenged  the  vote.  "On  what 
ground?"  asked  the  judge  sternly.  "On  the  ground 
that  he  is  an  alien.  He  confesses  that  he  was  born  in 
Missouri  and  hasn't  shown  any  naturalization  papers." 
The  judges  gravely  consulted  together  for  a  few  mo- 
ments and  then  the  spokesman  asked,  "Mr.  Frazier, 
have  you  any  naturalization  papers?" 

"Naturalization  papers?"  yelled  Jake.  "What's 
them?  Never  heerd  of  such  a  thing.  I  kin  prove  that 
I  was  borned  in  Pike  County,  Missouri,  but  I  hain't 
got  no  papers  to  prove  it  here.  But  you  know  well 
enough  that  I  hev  been  votin'  for  more  than  forty  years 
and  you've  seen  me  vote  more  times  than  you  hev  fin- 
gers and  toes." 

"Can't  help  what  you  have  done  in  the  past,  Mr. 
Frazier,"  said  the  relentless  election  judge,  "law  is  law. 
The  law  is  plain  that  a  Missourian  must  be  naturalized 
before  he  can  vote  in  Kansas." 

The  old  man  went  away  crying  with  rage  and  mor- 


148  WHEN  KANSAS  WAS  YOUNG 

tification.  He  met  an  old  acquaintance  and  said: 
"What  do  you  think  them  damn  prohibitioner  Repub- 
licans did?"  The  friend  didn't  know.  "Well,  sir,  they 
channeled  my  vote,  that's  what  they  did,  yes,  sir,  stood 
right  there  and  channeled  my  vote  because  they  said 
I  was  ailin'  and  must  have  naturalization  papers  be- 
cause I  was  born  in  Missouri.  I've  been  votin'  the  Dem- 
ocratic ticket  for  more  than  forty  years  and  this  is  the 
first  time  my  vote  was  ever  channeled." 

The  hearer  expressed  deep  sympathy  and  indigna- 
tion; said  that  it  was  an  infernal  plot  to  cheat  him 
out  of  his  political  rights  and  that  he  didn't  propose 
to  stand  for  it.  He  would  see  whether  an  old  citizen 
like  Jake  Frazier  could  be  cheated  out  of  his  rights 
that  way.  Then  the  indignant  defender  of  political 
rights  proceeded  to  organize  a  mob.  He  gathered  fol- 
lowers fast.  Some  were  armed,  some  were  not,  but 
all  expressed  themselves  as  determined  to  avenge  the 
wrong  done  an  old  citizen,  just  because  he  was  a  Demo- 
crat and  an  anti-prohibitionist. 

The  mob  selected  a  spokesman  who,  at  the  head  of 
the  eager  throng,  went  to  the  livery  stable  and  de- 
manded the  reason  for  refusing  the  vote  of  an  old  and 
well  known  resident.  The  election  judges  protested 
that  they  had  no  feeling  against  Frazier,  but  according 
to  his  own  statement  he  was  born  in  Missouri  and 
could  not  show  that  he  had  ever  been  naturalized.  The 
champion  of  Frazier  furiously  denounced  this  decision 
and  calling  on  a  lawyer,  who  was  with  the  party,  had 
him  cite  decisions  of  the  supreme  court  holding  that 
Congress  by  an  enabling  act  had  naturalized  all  Mis- 
sourians  who  had  taken  up  their  residence  in  other 
states.  After  a  long  and  heated  argument  the  judges 
declared  that  while  they  were  not  entirely  satisfied, 
if  Jake  would  swear  in  his  vote  his  ballot  would  be 
received.  A  long  and  involved  oath  was  then  admin- 


EVENTS  IN  THE  EIGHTIES  149 

istered,  the  vote  duly  deposited,  and  Jake  departed  for 
home  in  triumph,  declaring  that  no  durned  prohibi- 
tioner  Republican  could  channel  his  vote  and  get  away 
with  it. 

In  such  manner  was  the  tedium  of  life  on  the  border 
relieved  and  the  joy  of  life  enhanced. 


When  an  Indian  Agency  Came  Near  Being  Wiped  Out 

The  fall  of  the  year  1880  was  as  mild  and  beautiful 
as  Kansas  falls  generally  are.  There  was  a  wonderful 
fascination  in  the  wide  open  spaces  of  the  range  coun- 
try, and  as  a  couple  of  Medicine  Lodge  ranchmen  were 
going  down  into  the  Canadian  country  to  hunt  for 
horses  I  accepted  an  invitation  to  ride  with  them.  I 
have  said  that  there  was  a  wonderful  fascination  in 
the  wide  open  spaces,  and  there  was,  but  when  a  man 
who  is  soft  and  unaccustomed  to  riding  sits  twelve 
hours  in  a  saddle  on  the  back  of  a  horse,  trotting 
most  of  the  time,  the  novelty  and  charm  mostly  wear 
off,  also  the  rider  has  a  disinclination  to  sit  down  for 
several  days  afterward.  But  once  started  on  a  ride  of 
that  kind,  there  was  no  rest  for  the  tenderfoot.  After 
that  twelve-hour  ride  and  a  few  hours'  rest  on  the  buf- 
falo grass  we  were  up  at  daylight  for  another  day's 
ride,  and  continued  for  a  week.  Our  objective  was 
Darlington,  where  the  Indian  agency  was  located  and 
from  there  we  followed  up  the  North  Canadian  to 
Camp  Supply.  It  is  possible  that,  if  we  had  known 
what  was  going  on  at  the  agency,  the  horse  hunt  might 
have  been  postponed  and  this  story  would  never  have 
been  written. 

During  the  administration  of  General  Grant  as  presi- 
dent, he  conceived  the  idea  of  putting  the  Indian  agen- 
cies in  charge  of  the  Quakers,  actuated  no  doubt  by 


150  WHEN  KANSAS  WAS  YOUNG 

the  story  of  William  Penn  and  his  dealings  with  the 
red  men.  President  Hayes  continued  the  policy  of 
Grant  to  a  considerable  extent  and  that  accounted  for 
the  fact  that  Miles  was  in  charge  of  the  agency  at 
Darlington  in  the  fall  of  1880.  At  that  time  this 
agency  had  charge  of  the  Cheyennes  who  had  been 
moved  down  from  their  northern  home,  the  Arapahoes, 
and  some  of  the  Kiowas.  Three  years  before  a  dis- 
satisfied band  of  the  Cheyennes  under  the  leadership 
of  Chief  Dull  Knife,  had  left  the  reservation  and,  trav- 
eling northward  through  Kansas,  had  left  a  trail 
marked  by  burnings  and  massacre.  Dull  Knife  and 
most  of  his  followers  had  been  captured,  but  there  was 
still  a  dissatisfied  element  among  the  Cheyennes,  who 
wanted  to  start  on  another  raid  toward  the  old  hunting 
grounds. 

It  was  the  custom  in  those  days  to  distribute  the 
government  allowance  of  beeves  to  the  Indians  on  a 
certain  day  of  the  week,  Monday,  as  I  recall.  The 
Indians  were  divided  into  bands  and  to  each  band 
was  allotted  so  many  beeves.  The  beeves  were  turned 
out  on  the  prairie  and  the  Indians  ran  them  down  and 
killed  them  Indian  fashion  and  carried  the  meat  to 
their  camps.  Agent  Miles  had  made  an  order  that  each 
band  must  send  its  representatives  and  get  its  beef  al- 
lotment on  the  regular  issue  day,  or,  failing  to  do  that, 
the  band  would  get  no  beef  that  week.  Some  two  weeks 
before  we  arrived  at  Darlington  some  of  the  bands  had 
failed  to  send  their  representatives  on  the  regular  issue 
day  and  when  they  appeared  the  next  day  and  wanted 
their  allotment  of  beef  Agent  Miles  refused  to  give 
it  to  them.  They  left  the  agency  sullen  and  vengeful. 
Agent  Miles  had  at  the  time  a  fine  driving  team  and 
buggy  and  it  was  his  custom,  in  the  beautiful  evenings 
of  the  early  fall,  to  drive  out  along  the  government 
road  that  ran  along  beside  the  Canadian  River.  That 


EVENTS  IN  THE  EIGHTIES  151 

evening  he  drove  out  as  usual,  accompanied  by  his 
wife.  When  four  or  five  miles  from  the  agency  two 
young  Indian  bucks  stepped  out  into  the  road,  stopped 
him,  and  told  him  that  unless  he  changed  his  order 
about  the  beef  issue  they  would  kill  him.  As  there 
was  little  doubt  they  would  have  put  the  threat  into 
execution,  there  was  nothing  for  the  agent  to  do  but 
yield.  The  next  day  the  bands  which  had  been  refused 
their  allotment  came  in  and  got  it,  but  the  day  fol- 
lowing Miles  sent  a  number  of  his  Indian  police  out  to 
arrest  the  leaders  of  these  recalcitrant  bands  and  bring 
them  to  the  agency.  The  young  warriors  stood  off 
the  police  and  refused  to  be  arrested,  but  told  the 
police  to  tell  the  agent  they  would  be  at  the  agency 
the  following  day. 

The  following  day  they  came  all  right,  but  they 
came  six  hundred  strong,  all  armed  with  Winchesters 
which  had  been  furnished  by  the  Government.  They 
were  nearly  all  young  men,  the  flower  of  the  Cheyenne 
tribe,  as  fearless  and  desperate  fighters  as  there  were 
among  the  tribes  of  the  plains.  It  was  their  intention 
to  clean  up  the  agency  and  massacre  the  agent  and 
all  the  other  whites  who  were  there.  They  dragged 
Miles  out  of  the  agency  building  and  probably  would 
have  started  the  killing  if  it  had  not  been  for  the  cool- 
ness and  courage  of  an  Indian  chief.  Little  Chief  had 
himself  been  at  one  time  known  as  a  "bad  Indian." 
He  was  one  of  the  Indians  sent  by  the  Government  to 
the  Dry  Tortugas,  where  he  had  been  kept  for  several 
years.  The  experience  had  completely  cured  him  of 
any  desire  to  make  war  on  the  whites  and  from  the 
time  he  was  returned  to  the  reservation,  he  was  a  con- 
sistent advocate  of  peace  with  the  white  man  and  the 
education  and  industrial  development  of  his  people. 
He  finally  was  converted  to  Christianity,  joined  the 
Presbyterian  Church,  and  became  a  ruling  elder  in  that 


152  WHEN  KANSAS  WAS  YOUNG 

denomination.  At  the  time  on  that  fall  day  when  a 
massacre  seemed  certain,  Little  Chief  pushed  his  way 
into  the  crowd  of  infuriated  warriors  and  began  to  talk 
to  them. 

"You  can  kill  the  agent  and  all  the  whites  there  are 
here,"  he  said.  "Maybe  you  can  kill  all  the  soldiers 
there  are  at  the  fort  over  there."  (There  was  a  small 
garrison  of  about  one  company  stationed  at  Fort  Reno 
at  the  time.)  "But  that  will  do  you  no  good.  I  have 
been  across  the  white  man's  country  and  I  know  that 
the  white  men  are  as  many  as  the  leaves  of  the  forest. 
You  have  a  few  guns ;  they  have  many  thousand.  If 
you  kill  the  agent  and  these  white  men  you  will  all  be 
hung.  You  will  not  be  shot  as  brave  warriors  are  shot, 
but  you  will  be  hung  like  dogs.  I,  Little  Chief,  know 
this  and  you  know  that  I  have  never  told  you  lies." 

Perhaps  some  of  the  more  reckless  and  daring  would 
have  ignored  the  advice  of  Little  Chief,  but  he  had 
made  an  impression  on  the  leaders  and  after  all  it  was 
the  mob-spirit  that  dominated.  A  mob  will  not  act 
without  leadership.  The  situation  was  saved  and  a 
bloody  massacre  was  averted.  Another  man  who  prob- 
ably also  helped  to  avert  the  catastrophe  was  George 
Bent,  the  halfbreed  son  of  the  noted  trader,  who  built 
Bent's  fort  on  the  upper  Arkansas  in  Colorado.  There 
was  not  much  to  be  said  for  Bent,  if  reports  were 
true,  but  on  that  day  he  stood  against  the  Indians, 
who  were  bent  on  murder,  and  he  had  considerable 
influence  with  them. 

It  was  about  a  week  after  this  near  massacre  when 
we  rode  up  the  valley  of  the  Canadian,  accompanied 
by  the  celebrated  scout,  Jack  Stillwell,  who  when  a  boy 
of  sixteen  had  undertaken  the  desperate  enterprise  of 
crawling  through  the  camp  of  armed  warriors  led  by 
Roman  Nose  and  getting  aid  for  Forsythe  and  his  little 
band  of  scouts  and  soldiers  surrounded  on  Beecher's 


EVENTS  IN  THE  EIGHTIES  153 

Island  and  threatened  with  annihilation.  As  he  rode 
with  us  in  those  warm  September  days,  Jack  Stillwell 
was  a  fine  specimen  of  physical  manhood  and  about  the 
most  interesting  traveling  companion  I  ever  knew.  Al- 
most all  his  life  had  been  spent  among  the  various  wild 
Indian  tribes.  He  knew  their  sign  language  and  could 
understand  them  and  make  himself  understood  with 
ease.  There  was  none  of  the  braggart  or  swaggering 
"bad  man"  in  his  manner  or  speech,  but  he  had  a  rich 
fund  of  experience  which  held  and  interested  me  as 
nothing  else  had  done  since  I  stole  away  to  read  the 
blood-curdling  tales  narrated  in  Beedle's  dime  novels. 
It  was  a  good  many  years  afterward  before  I  saw 
him  again.  By  that  time  he  had  become  fat  and 
short  of  breath  and  looked  little  like  the  trim,  hard- 
muscled,  and  handsome  scout  that  he  was  in  the  fall 
of  1880.  He  was  elected  as  the  first  police  judge 
of  the  new  town  of  El  Reno  and  made  a  reputation  as 
a  fearless  official  who  insisted  that  laws  should  be 
obeyed  and  order  maintained. 


The  Justice  of  the  Border 

The  first  bank  in  Medicine  Lodge  was  established 
by  a  man  by  the  name  of  Hickman.  The  story  was 
that  he  purchased  a  safe  on  time  and  borrowed  money, 
giving  the  safe  as  security,  to  get  his  banking  capital. 
Even  on  that  narrow  foundation  the  bank  gathered 
up  a  good  deal  of  business  and  might  have  succeeded 
if  the  proprietor  had  not  branched  out  and  undertaken 
to  carry  too  great  a  load.  As  it  was  the  Hickman 
bank  failed,  to  the  sorrow  of  some  of  the  trusting 
depositors,  for  that  was  in  the  days  before  guaranteed 
deposit  laws  were  thought  of  or  there  was  any  state 
supervision  of  banks.  After  the  failure  of  the  Hick- 


154  WHEN  KANSAS  WAS  YOUNG 

man  bank  the  Medicine  Valley  bank  was  organized,  with 
Wylie  Payne  as  president,  and  George  Geppert  as 
cashier. 

Payne  was  also  president  of  the  great  Comanche  cat- 
tle pool  which  ranged  its  herds  over  full  1,200  square 
miles,  all  inclosed  with  barb  wire  fence,  an  appropri- 
ation of  public  land,  of  course,  without  any  warrant 
of  law.  Wylie  Payne  was  a  striking  character.  Born 
in  poverty,  he  had  won  his  way  to  what  was  then  con- 
sidered wealth.  His  brand  was  on  3,000  head  of  cattle, 
range  count,  worth  then  $100,000.  A  man  of  keen  eye, 
square  jaw,  and  indomitable  energy,  he  was  a  dominant 
figure  in  any  organization  with  which  he  was  affiliated. 
He  was  a  hard  rider,  hard  swearer,  not  hot  tempered, 
but  a  fearless  fighter  when  the  occasion  seemed  to  re- 
quire it.  He  was  a  man  who  neither  sought  nor  avoided 
quarrels,  but  would  rather  fight  than  yield  when  his 
will  was  opposed.  There  were  men  on  the  range  who 
disliked  him,  but  none  who  questioned  his  integrity 
or  his  courage.  So  it  was  that  Wylie  Payne  was  a 
tower  of  strength  to  the  new  bank,  which  shortly  num- 
bered its  patrons  and  depositors  from  the  Panhandle 
of  Texas  to  the  Arkansas  and  from  the  Medicine  River 
to  the  Colorado  line. 

On  a  morning  in  early  May  in  1883,  a  half  hun- 
dred cowmen  waited  impatiently  in  the  livery  barn 
in  Medicine  Lodge,  their  horses  saddled  ready  for  the 
"round  up"  which  had  been  called  that  day  to  take 
place  on  Antelope  Flat.  A  steady  drizzling  rain  was 
falling  from  the  clouds  which  hung  low  and  heavy  over 
the  valley  of  the  Medicine.  The  rough  weather-beaten 
men  were  waiting  for  the  "clearing  up"  and  that  was 
the  reason  why  their  horses  were  still  saddled  in  the 
barn  at  nine  o'clock  that  morning  when  the  Medi- 
cine Valley  bank  opened.  They  were  so  busy  watching 
the  weather  that  they  did  not  notice  four  men  ride  in 


EVENTS  IN  THE  EIGHTIES  155 

from  the  west  and  dismount  beside  the  bank.  The 
leader  of  the  four  was  Henry  Brown,  a  lean,  sinewy 
man,  with  thin,  cruel  lips,  and  cold  gray  eyes,  to 
which  mercy  was  a  stranger.  At  one  time  he  had  been 
a  member  of  the  gang  led  by  that  human  tiger,  that 
white  Apache,  Billie  the  Kid,  who  before  he  had  reached 
his  majority  was  credited  with  twenty  cold-blooded 
murders  and  who  slew  more  from  an  inhuman  lust  for 
blood  than  for  the  gain  that  might  come  from  his 
robberies.  When  the  Kid  was  slain  and  his  gang 
broken  up,  Henry  Brown  drifted  eastward. 

Caldwell  was  then  a  wild  cattle  town,  which  had 
been  the  scene  of  numerous  killings.  The  mayor  and 
the  city  marshal  had  both  been  shot  dead  on  the  prin- 
cipal street  of  the  town  and  drunken  cowboys  rode 
boastfully  into  the  business  houses,  to  the  serious  detri- 
ment of  the  furniture  and  interruption  of  business. 
The  "killers"  seemed  to  have  the  city  fathers  "buf- 
faloed" and  the  demand  was  insistent  that  a  police 
force  be  organized  that  would  give  reasonable  protec- 
tion to  citizens.  Somehow  the  word  had  come  to  Cald- 
well that  Henry  Brown  was  the  man  for  the  job  of 
city  marshal  and  he  was  hired.  It  is  fair  to  say  that 
he  did  restore  order.  An  expert  with  the  revolver,  his 
favorite  weapon  was  a  sawed-off  Winchester.  Some 
men  from  the  range  undertook  to  shoot  up  the  town. 
Brown  killed  them  as  coolly  and  with  as  little  com- 
punction as  he  would  have  shot  a  stray  dog. 

It  was  not  to  be  supposed,  however,  that  a  man 
of  the  character  and  temperament  of  Henry  Brown 
would  be  content  to  remain  as  city  marshal  of  a 
town  like  Caldwell.  He  had  heard  that  the  Medicine 
Valley  bank  was  bulging  with  money  and  he  organized 
for  a  raid.  With  him  was  his  assistant  city  marshal, 
big  Ben  Wheeler,  a  giant  in  stature  with  a  weak  and 
sensual  face,  not  a  leader  but  a  fitting  follower  of  a 


156  WHEN  KANSAS  WAS  YOUNG 

man  like  Henry  Brown.  The  other  two  were  Billie 
Smith  and  John  Wesley  from  the  T-5  range,  on  the 
Eagle  Chief.  Brown,  Wheeler,  and  Wesley  entered  the 
bank  while  Billie  Smith  was  left  outside  to  hold  the 
horses.  Wheeler  faced  the  cashier's  window  with  drawn 
revolver,  Wesley  stepped  in  front  of  the  little  window 
at  the  side  of  the  president's  desk,  while  Brown  stepped 
back  into  the  president's  room  to  cover  the  assistant 
cashier  and  guard  the  door  of  the  bank  from  outside 
interference.  With  the  command  of  "Hands  up!"  the 
cashier  promptly  put  up  his  hands,  but  Wylie  Payne 
had  never  put  up  his  hands  at  the  command  of  any  man. 
It  was  instinctive  with  him  to  fight.  He  reached  for- 
ward to  get  his  revolver,  which  lay  in  the  open  drawer 
of  his  desk.  Just  then  two  heavy  revolvers  barked  in 
unison.  With  a  groan  the  cashier  staggered  back  shot 
through  the  heart  and  Payne  dropped  from  his  chair 
shot  through  the  spine. 

A  revolver  fired  with  intent  to  kill  seems  to  have  a 
different  sound  than  when  fired  in  sport.  When  the 
sound  of  shots  in  the  bank  rang  out,  the  inhabitants 
of  the  little  cattle  town  seemed  to  know  instinctively 
that  murder  was  being  done.  The  little  red-headed  city 
marshal,  who  had  never  had  his  baptism  of  fire,  ran 
up  the  street  with  gun  in  hand  and  promptly  en- 
gaged in  a  duel  with  Smith,  who  was  holding  the 
horses.  Unfortunately  his  courage  was  better  than  his 
aim,  and  Smith  was  unharmed.  On  the  other  hand, 
Smith's  aim  was  diverted  by  the  plunging  of  the  horses, 
to  which  fact  the  red-headed  city  marshal  probably 
owed  his  life.  Wheeler,  always  a  coward  at  heart, 
heard  the  shooting  outside  and  panic  stricken,  dropped 
his  gun  and  the  sack  he  had  brought  with  which  to 
carry  away  the  currency  and  coin,  and  dashed  out  of 
the  bank.  Brown  and  Wesley  followed  and  all  four 
mounted  their  horses  and  dashed  out  of  town,  with  half 
a  hundred  mounted  men  in  hot  pursuit. 


EVENTS  IN  THE  EIGHTIES  157 

To  the  southwest  of  Medicine  Lodge  is  a  range  of 
low  lying  hills.  In  the  prehistoric  past  the  erosion  of 
waters  had  worn  great  pockets  in  the  sides  of  these 
hills  as  if  scooped  out  by  a  titanic  shovel.  It  was 
toward  these  hills  that  Brown  and  his  companions 
turned  desperately  for  safety  and,  perhaps  two  miles 
from  town,  rode  into  one  of  these  pockets  in  the  hills. 
The  rain  was  falling  steadily,  and  dripping  over  the 
canyon's  side  when  the  robbers  took  refuge.  The  wa- 
ter was  cold  and  rose  steadily  until  it  reached  almost 
to  the  knees  of  the  desperate  men  and  their  horses. 
It  took  the  courage  out  of  them  and  after  a  few  hours 
Henry  Brown  appeared  at  the  mouth  of  the  canyon 
with  a  handkerchief  tied  on  the  end  of  his  gun  barrel 
as  a  token  of  surrender.  The  sun  was  sliding  down 
the  western  sky  when  the  four  men,  two  of  them 
shackled  together  with  the  single  pair  of  shackles  pos- 
sessed by  the  sheriff  and  the  other  two  handcuffed 
with  his  only  pair  of  handcuffs,  were  placed  in  the  little 
cottonwood  shanty  which  passed  as  a  jail.  That  after- 
noon and  evening  knots  of  excited  men  could  be  seen 
talking  together,  not  loudly,  but  with  a  quietness  that 
made  the  conversations  the  more  ominous. 

"We  will  give  you  $1,000  if  you  will  save  our  lives 
till  daylight,"  said  Henry  Brown  to  the  county  attor- 
ney who  had  gone  to  the  jail  to  get  the  statements 
of  the  men. 

"It  is  my  duty  to  protect  you  from  mob  violence  if 
I  can,"  replied  the  county  attorney,  "but  it  is  not  in 
my  power  to  save  your  lives  till  morning.  You  had 
better  make  whatever  preparations  you  can  for  death." 

And  then  the  men  facing  their  doom  told  this  re- 
markable story  to  the  county  attorney.  They  said 
that  the  bank  robbery  was  a  frame-up  to  save  the  cash- 
ier, who  was  short  $10,000;  that  Wylie  Payne  was  not 
expected  to  be  in  town  as  he  had  arranged  to  ship  some 
beef  cattle  on  that  day;  that  when  they  found  him 


158  WHEN  KANSAS  WAS  YOUNG 

in  the  bank  they  concluded  that  they  had  been  double 
crossed  and  when  Payne  reached  for  his  gun  Wesley 
shot  him  and  then  Wheeler  had  shot  the  cashier.  That 
evening  Payne  died  in  great  agony,  game  to  the  last 
and  apparently  only  concerned  because  his  act  of  going 
for  his  gun  had  caused  the  death  of  the  cashier. 

When  the  word  spread  abroad  that  Payne  was  dead, 
the  excitement  became  more  intense.  A  man  who  had 
been  in  California  in  the  days  of  the  Vigilantes  and 
had  some  experience  in  the  tying  of  the  hangman's 
noose,  was  practicing  on  some  pliable  ropes.  At  about 
ten  o'clock  the  crowd  moved  silently  through  the  dark- 
ness toward  the  wooden  jail.  They  were  met  by  the 
sheriff  and  his  deputies  with  the  question  what  was 
wanted.  "The  four  men  inside"  was  the  terse  reply. 
Then  there  was  a  brief  fusillade  participated  in  by  the 
sheriff  and  his  deputies  and  the  men  in  the  crowd,  but 
the  observer  might  have  noticed  that  the  flashes  from 
the  guns  were  upward  and  not  horizontal.  The  sheriff 
and  his  deputies  were  overcome  and  two  brawny  range- 
men  threw  their  shoulders  against  the  jail  door  and 
burst  it  inward. 

There  was  a  surprise  for  the  crowd.  The  men  had 
somehow  gotten  rid  of  the  handcuffs  and  shackles  and 
burst  out  into  the  crowd.  Henry  Brown,  lean  and 
lithe  as  a  panther,  slipped  through  the  hands  that 
grabbed  at  him  and  started  to  run  down  the  hill.  A 
quiet  farmer  standing  at  the  corner  with  a  sawed-off 
shotgun  loaded  with  buckshot,  emptied  both  barrels 
into  Brown  as  he  passed  him  and  the  leader  of  the  four 
with  a  groan  fell  dead.  Wheeler,  severely  wounded 
with  an  arm  dangling  by  his  side,  ran  with  the  fleet- 
ness  inspired  by  deadly  fear,  but  was  captured  within 
300  yards.  Smith  and  Wesley  were  captured  within  a 
few  feet  of  the  jail  door. 

Down  in  the  bottom  near  the  town  grew  an  elm  with 


EVENTS  IN  THE  EIGHTIES  159 

a  long  strong  limb  branching  out  from  the  trunk  per- 
haps fifteen  feet  from  the  ground,  and  under  this  the 
three  were  ranged. 

"Is  there  any  statement  any  of  you  gents  would  like 
to  make  before  you  swing?"  asked  the  leader  of  the 
mob. 

Wheeler,  his  great  bulk  shaking  with  mortal  fear, 
his  face  wet  with  cold  sweat,  a  coward  at  heart,  begged 
piteously  for  his  life:  "Oh,  men,"  he  moaned,  "spare 
my  life.  There's  other  fellers  mixed  up  in  this  and  I 
will  tell  everything  if  you  will  only  spare  my  life." 

Wesley  managed  to  whisper  that  he  had  a  mother  in 
Texas  and  not  to  let  her  know.  Smith,  who  had  done 
none  of  the  killing,  was  the  only  one  to  show  nerve. 
"What's  the  use?"  he  said  sullenly  but  firmly.  "You 
intend  to  hang  us  anyway,  so  pull  when  you  are  ready." 

"Pull,  boys,"  quietly  directed  the  leader.  There  was 
the  rasping  sound  of  the  ropes  drawn  across  the  rough 
bark  of  the  limb.  There  was  the  spasmodic  twitching 
of  the  limbs  of  the  doomed  men,  and  three  bodies 
swayed  slightly  in  the  night  wind. 

Perhaps  there  never  was  a  more  orderly  lynching. 
The  next  morning  the  coroner,  determined  that  no 
forms  of  the  law  should  be  overlooked,  summoned  a  jury 
who  solemnly  viewed  the  remains  and  rendered  a  verdict 
that  they  had  come  to  their  death  at  the  hands  of 
persons  unknown  to  the  jury.  The  bodies  were  buried 
in  the  little  frontier  graveyard.  I  have  been  told  that 
all  of  them  were  dug  up  and  no  doubt  for  many  years 
the  skeletons  have  been  used  for  demonstration  pur- 
poses by  classes  in  anatomy. 

The  Great  Wmter  Kill 

The  winter  of  1885-86  brought  ruin  to  the  greater 
part  of  the  men  who  depended  on  free  range  in  west 


160  WHEN  KANSAS  WAS  YOUNG 

and  southwest  Kansas,  eastern  Colorado,  the  Cherokee 
strip,  western  Indian  territory  and  the  Panhandle  of 
Texas.  Up  till  then  there  had  been  no  great  winter 
kill ;  the  price  of  cattle  had  steadily  risen  and  the 
profits  had  been  exceedingly  satisfactory.  The  result 
had  been  to  crowd  more  and  more  cattle  on  the  range, 
so  that  there  was  an  increasing  shortage  of  winter 
pasture.  In  the  early  days  of  the  range  it  was  cus- 
tomary for  the  owner  to  keep  his  herds  on  a  part  of 
the  range  during  the  summer  and  early  fall  months 
and  leave  part  of  the  range  to  grow  up  to  buffalo  and 
other  native  grasses.  On  a  good  winter  range  the 
buffalo  grass,  unpastured  during  the  summer,  would 
grow  up  several  inches  in  height  and  bearing  a  generous 
crop  of  seed.  Unless  there  were  unusual  fall  rains  this 
grass  would  cure  like  perfect  hay,  but  there  was  always 
a  bit  of  green  near  the  root  of  the  grass.  It  made  a 
perfect  balanced  ration  and  cattle  turned  in  on  this 
winter  pasture  would  actually  fatten  during  the  winter 
months.  But  as  the  number  of  cattle  increased  they 
encroached  more  and  more  on  the  winter  range  until 
there  was  practically  none  left  and  cattle  were  forced 
to  winter  on  the  same  range  over  which  they  had  grazed 
during  the  summer  and  fall. 

The  weather  remained  fine  during  the  fall  of  1885. 
The  range  was  crowded,  but  cattle  men  were  hoping 
that  there  might  be  an  open  winter.  During  the  last 
days  of  December  or  possibly  the  early  days  of  Janu- 
ary there  came  a  sudden  change.  A  cold  rain  turned 
to  sleet  until  the  ground  was  covered  with  ice,  and  over 
this  fell  a  sheet  of  snow.  The  weather  turned  bitterly 
cold.  There  was  no  available  food  for  the  poor  brutes 
that  wandered  over  the  range,  for  in  those  days  the 
oil  cake  which  has  since  then  saved  the  lives  of  hundreds 
of  thousands  of  range  cattle  had  not  been  invented. 

Generally  in  southwest  Kansas  severe  cold  weather 


EVENTS  IN  THE  EIGHTIES  161 

did  not  last  more  than  a  few  days,  but  that  winter 
there  was  no  respite.  Days  grew  into  weeks  with  the 
coat  of  ice  and  snow  unmelted.  At  first  the  weaker 
cattle  succumbed ;  the  stronger  wandered  restlessly  and 
ceaselessly  hunting  for  food  that  could  not  be  found; 
staggering  with  increasing  weakness,  crazed  with  hun- 
ger, emaciated  to  an  almost  unbelievable  degree,  the 
poor  creatures  wandered  on  until  they  could  endure  no 
longer.  The  A.  T.  &  S.  F.  fenced  its  right-of-way 
through  western  Kansas.  The  herds  to  the  north 
drifted  south  before  the  wind  until  they  reached  this 
wire  fence  and  there  they  left  their  carcasses,  already 
so  poor  in  flesh  as  hardly  to  tempt  the  coyotes  although 
they,  too,  were  on  the  verge  of  starvation. 

It  is  no  exaggeration  to  say  that  it  would  have  been 
possible  during  the  early  summer  of  1886  to  walk  from 
Kingsley  to  the  Colorado  line  along  the  right-of-way 
of  the  A.  T.  &  S.  F.  without  touching  foot  to  the 
ground.  Every  step  would  have  been  taken  on  the  dead 
carcasses  of  cattle.  Fully  eighty  per  cent  of  all  the 
cattle  in  Barber  and  other  southwest  Kansas  counties, 
the  western  part  of  what  was  then  the  Cherokee  strip, 
and  Indian  territory  and  the  Panhandle  of  Texas,  died 
during  that  terrible  winter  and  what  were  left  alive 
were  so  enfeebled  that  they  never  recovered  and  might 
almost  as  well  have  died. 

In  the  town  of  Medicine  Lodge  was  a  Jew  by  the 
name  of  Simon  Lebrecht,  who  bought  hides,  and  during 
the  summer  of  1886  reaped  a  rich  harvest.  Some  idea 
of  the  tremendous  loss  may  be  obtained  when  I  say  that 
this  one  Hebrew  hide  buyer  bought  forty  thousand  hides 
during  that  spring  and  summer.  Of  course  there  were 
other  hide  buyers  in  all  the  other  towns  and  it  is  safe 
to  say  that  not  more  than  one  animal  out  of  three  was 
ever  skinned. 

As  a  sample  of  the  losses  I  might  mention  that  of 


162  WHEN  KANSAS  WAS  YOUNG 

Captain  Perry  Ewing  and  Hon.  Tom  Potter,  of  Pea- 
body,  who  during  the  fall  of  1885  had  driven  up  from 
Texas  a  herd  of  some  3,300  young  steers,  and  turned 
them  on  the  range  on  Driftwood,  in  the  neighborhood 
where  the  flourishing  town  of  Alva  is  now  located.  The 
following  spring  they  rounded  up  eighty  enfeebled  liv- 
ing skeletons.  Captain  Ewing  had  been  a  soldier  in 
the  Confederate  army.  After  the  war  he  gathered 
enough  together  to  buy  a  small  herd  of  cattle  which 
he  turned  loose  on  the  range  in  the  Medicine  valley. 
For  years  he  had  roughed  it,  his  herd  gradually  in- 
creasing until  it  numbered  several  hundred  head.  These 
he  had  sold  and  put  the  entire  proceeds  into  the  Texas 
steers.  The  spring  found  him  broke  and  compelled  to 
make  a  new  start  in  Arizona. 

Some  fine  stock  breeders  happened  in  the  border 
town  of  Caldwell  and  were  talking  of  the  prices  they 
had  paid  for  certain  blooded  animals.  One  of  them  had 
purchased  a  Shorthorn  for  which  he  had  paid  $5,000. 
Another  had  paid  even  a  higher  price  for  a  White- 
face.  Sitting  nearby  was  a  rough,  weatherbeaten  man, 
who  listened  for  some  time  and  finally  said: 

"Beggin'  yo*  pahdon,  gentlemen,  I  must  say,  sah, 
that  yo'  are  pikers,  sah.  Yo'  talk  about  yo'  Short- 
ho'ns  and  Whitefaces  that  cost  five  and  six  thousand 
dollahs.  If  yo'  gentlemen  will  walk  down  heah  to  the 
state  line  a  half  mile,  I  will  show  you  an  animal  that 
cost  me  thirty  thousand  dollahs." 

They  were  interested  and  declared  that  they  would 
be  glad  to  walk  a  half  mile  or  more  to  see  such  a  valu- 
able animal.  Without  the  shadow  of  a  smile  the  man 
from  the  range  led  the  way  down  to  the  wire  fence 
on  the  border.  On  the  other  side  of  the  fence  stood 
a  runty,  narrow-hammed  Texas  steer  that  would  weigh 
in  flesh  perhaps  1,000  pounds,  but  at  that  time  would 
hardly  have  tipped  the  scales  at  500.  The  fine  stock 


EVENTS  IN  THE  EIGHTIES  163 

breeders  looked  disgusted,  but  the  man  from  the  range 
remarked  with  a  weary  sigh,  "I  paid  $30,000,  gentle- 
men, fo'  a  herd  of  cattle  last  yeah,  and  that  is  the 
herd." 

Seldom,  if  ever,  has  there  been  a  disaster  so  com- 
plete and  overwhelming  as  that  which  overtook  the 
men  of  the  range  during  that  fateful  winter.  They 
had  been  dubbed  cattle  barons  and  rather  prided  them- 
selves on  the  appellation.  They  were  generally  hard 
riders  and  free  spenders;  ready  to  go  on  each  others' 
paper  for  any  amount  and  generally  with  no  security 
except  the  personal  honor  of  the  men  they  favored. 
A  brief  six  months  saw  many  of  them  reduced  from 
affluence  to  penury,  but  it  must  also  be  said  that  as 
a  rule  they  were  good  losers.  Without  wasting  time 
in  useless  lamentations,  they  started  to  hunt  for  new 
pastures  and  commenced  another  battle  with  nature 
and  the  elements  to  recoup  their  losses  and  build  again 
their  shattered  fortunes. 


The  Organization  of  Wichita  Coiwty 

One  day  during  his  second  term  as  governor,  John 
A.  Martin  unbosomed  himself  to  a  reporter  concern- 
ing a  matter  which  was  the  greatest  cause  of  worry 
that  he  had  to  encounter  during  his  administration. 
It  so  happened  that  a  great  part  of  the  counties  in 
the  western  third  of  the  state  were  organized  during 
his  two  terms  as  governor,  and  in  nearly  every  one 
there  was  strife  and  bloodshed  connected  with  the  loca- 
tion of  the  county  seat.  Governor  Martin,  himself  a 
thoroughly  honest  man,  was  astonished  and  grieved  to 
find  that  men  in  whose  integrity  he  had  had  the  fullest 
confidence,  when  once  mixed  up  with  a  county-seat  con- 
test, seemed  to  forget  about  every  moral  principle  and 


164  WHEN  KANSAS  WAS  YOUNG 

lend  themselves  to  almost  every  form  of  lawlessness  and 
crime  in  order  to  win. 

"What  is  the  use  of  it  all?"  said  the  governor,  sadly. 
"Finally  the  courts  will  settle  the  matter  of  which 
towns  are  entitled  to  the  county  seats,  and  all  this 
violence  and  bloodshed  will  avail  nothing." 

As  one  travels  over  western  Kansas  now,  or  in  the 
years  that  have  passed  since  the  fierce  county-seat  wars 
ended,  if  he  is  told  the  story  of  those  bloody  conflicts, 
he  wonders  what  it  was  all  about.  There  is  nothing 
that  he  can  see  about  one  of  these  little  prairie  towns 
that  would  excite  the  cupidity  of  men,  to  say  nothing 
of  tempting  them  to  engage  in  the  bloody  forays  that 
marked  the  history  of  the  frontier.  One  had  to  live 
in  those  times  to  have  some  adequate  understanding 
of  the  situation.  During  the  middle  eighties  a  great 
tide  of  immigration  swept  over  western  Kansas.  With- 
in two  years  the  population  of  the  western  third  of 
Kansas  increased  a  quarter  of  a  million.  The  U.  S. 
land  offices  were  crowded  almost  day  and  night  with 
applicants  wishing  to  file  on  homesteads.  Land  office 
attorneys  were  swamped  with  business  and  making 
money  far  in  excess  of  their  fondest  dreams  of  a  year 
or  two  before.  County-seat  boomers  figured  that  within 
a  few  months  after  becoming  the  seat  of  county  gov- 
ernment their  town  would  rival  in  size  and  business  the 
best  county-seat  towns  in  eastern  Kansas  or  in  the  older 
states. 

Suppose,  then,  that  the  county  seat  founders  laid 
out  the  town  on  a  section  of  land  which  at  govern- 
ment price  cost  perhaps  $800,  and  the  cost  of  plotting 
it  into  streets,  alleys,  and  lots.  Counting  eight  lots 
to  the  acre,  there  would  be  120  lots  in  the  town  site, 
and  judging  by  the  prices  asked  and  received  in  pros- 
perous county  seat  towns  in  the  East,  $100  per  lot 
on  the  average  would  be  a  conservative  estimate.  That 


EVENTS  IN  THE  EIGHTIES  165 

would  mean  that  the  town  site  which  perhaps  cost  the 
founders  all  told  three  or  four  thousand  dollars,  would 
sell  within  a  few  months  for  more  than  half  a  million. 
Was  there  ever  a  get-rich-quick  scheme  which  equaled 
it  on  paper?  In  the  days  when  the  Belgian  hare  craze 
swept  over  the  country,  an  expert  in  figures  could  esti- 
mate that  from  a  single  pair  of  rabbits  their  progeny 
would  in  ten  or  fifteen  years  mount  away  up  into  the 
millions  and  make  the  fortunate  investor  a  multi- 
millionaire. But  then  there  were  some  risks  in  the 
rabbit  business  and  it  would  at  best  take  several  years 
to  realize  the  fortune,  but  the  founders  of  the  county 
seat  figured  that  once  they  had  captured  the  prize  of 
the  county  capital  the  rest  was  sure  and  easy.  They 
would  simply  clean  up  at  the  ratio  of  more  than  a 
hundred  to  one  within  the  brief  space  of  six  months  or 
a  year. 

Of  course  they  could  not  look  into  the  future  when 
drouth  and  hot  winds  would  drive  out  the  homesteaders, 
when  all  their  hopes  would  fade  and  the  towns  would 
shrivel  almost  to  nothing.  Not  sensing  the  future  they 
fought  ruthlessly  and  unscrupulously.  They  blackened 
their  souls  with  crime  and  stained  their  hands  with 
blood.  The  county  of  Wichita  was  organized  in  1886 
and  almost  immediately  two  towns  became  rivals  for 
the  county  seat.  Leoti  was  supposed  to  be  located  in 
the  geographical  center  of  the  county  and  the  rival 
town  of  Coronado  was  established  three  miles  east  of 
the  center.  The  census  enumerator  was  a  Coronado 
man,  but  when  his  report  was  finally  handed  in  to 
Governor  Martin  there  seemed  to  be  so  much  uncer- 
tainty about  it  that  he  decided  to  send  a  special  com- 
missioner out  to  get  at  the  real  sentiment  of  the  citizens 
for  the  benefit  of  the  governor.  Samuel  Gerow,  of 
Atchison,  was  selected  for  that  unpleasant  job  and  ap- 
parently he  performed  his  work  honestly  and  fearlessly, 


166  WHEN  KANSAS  WAS  YOUNG 

although  at  times  threatened  with  bodily  harm  by  the 
rival  factions  when  one  side  or  the  other  concluded 
that  he  was  giving  the  other  the  better  of  the  count. 

The  legislature  of  1887  amended  the  law  providing 
for  the  organization  of  counties  and  the  location  of 
county  seats  requiring  a  registration  of  the  legal 
voters  prior  to  the  election.  Under  this  new  law  the 
county  seat  election  was  called  for  March  10,  1887. 
If  the  framers  of  the  law  supposed  that  this  would 
do  away  with  county  seat  troubles  they  were  mistaken. 
It  merely  shifted  the  contest  from  the  final  election 
to  the  registration  and  the  conflict  raged  with  as  much 
bitterness  as  before. 

In  the  case  of  Leoti  and  Coronado  the  culmination 
came  on  a  bright,  mild  Sunday  afternoon,  February 
27,  1887,  when  in  the  main  street  of  Coronado  was  en- 
acted one  of  the  bloodiest  tragedies  in  all  the  wild  his- 
tory of  the  border.  Each  town  supported  a  newspaper, 
both,  of  course,  intensely  partisan,  and  no  doubt  unfair, 
so  that  it  is  hard  to  get  the  real  truth  of  what  hap- 
pened on  that  fatal  day.  In  examining  the  files  of  the 
rival  newspapers  I  find  the  following  account  in  the 
Coronado  Herald  of  June  16,  1887: 

"During  the  time  one  Gerow  was  taking  the  wishes  of 
the  voters  of  this  county  in  regard  to  the  temporary  county 
seat,  certain  parties  in  Leoti  sent  to  Wallace  to  secure  the 
services  of  one  Charles  Coulter  and  his  six-shooter,  both 
too  well  known  in  western  Kansas  to  the  sorrow  of  many 
good  people.  Coulter  came  and  for  the  promise  of  $750 
undertook  the  job  of  making  Leoti  the  county  seat.  His 
first  appearance  was  at  the  polls  north  of  Coronado  with 
about  150  imported  toughs  to  receive  $4  per  day.  Coronado 
voters  dared  not  go  near  the  polls.  Again  on  the  day  of 
registration  he,  with  his  companion,  Rains,  stood  at  the  polls 
with  guns  and  dictated  who  should  register  and  who  should 
not.  Coronado  men  left  the  place  of  registration  to  avoid 
bloodshed.  During  the  time  they  were  at  the  polls  the 


EVENTS  IN  THE  EIGHTIES  167 

unarmed  Coronadoites  were  covered  with  rifles  in  the  hands 
of  Coulter's  friends,  stationed  in  the  town  of  Leoti.  Later 
that  day  Coulter  and  Rains  held  up  two  Coronado  men  with 
guns  and  killed  a  valuable  horse  belonging  to  them. 

"Up  to  this  time  not  a  single  Coronado  man  had  ex- 
posed a  weapon,  or  lost  his  temper.  On  Sunday  morning, 
February  27,  while  the  people  of  this  town  were  at  church, 
William  Rains  and  A.  R.  Johnson  came  to  Coronado  from 
Leoti  and  asked  a  druggist  here  for  a  bottle  of  beer. 
They  were  informed  that  there  was  not  any  beer  in  town. 
Not  seeing  anybody  on  the  street  they  remarked  that  'it 
would  be  a  good  time  to  round  up  the  d — n  town/  They 
returned  to  Leoti  and  recruited  their  forces  with  Charles 
Coulter,  Frank  Jenness,  A.  N.  Boorey,  Emmet  Denning, 
George  Watkins,  and  a  case  of  beer.  When  they  arrived  at 
Coronado  they  proceeded  to  make  everybody  they  met  drink 
with  them  and  tried  to  make  a  sick  man  get  out  of  bed 
and  dance  at  the  muzzles  of  pistols.  Later  Coulter  com- 
menced to  knock  men  down  with  his  pistol,  while  Frank 
Jenness  would  single  out  men  to  cover  with  his  pistol.  But 
such  sport  was  too  timid  for  drunken  desperadoes,  so  Coul- 
ter opened  the  ball  by  shooting  Charles  Loomis  twice,  while 
Rains  shot  him  (Loomis)  in  the  arm.  Up  to  this  time  not 
a  single  weapon  was  drawn  by  a  Coronado  man,  but  after 
these  three  shots  were  fired  by  Coulter  and  Rains,  it  seemed 
for  thirty  seconds  from  pistol  reports,  that  every  man  in 
and  near  the  crowd  was  shooting.  When  the  smoke  cleared 
away  the  old  maxim  was  verified:  'Death  loves  a  shining 
mark,'  and  in  Coulter  and  Rains  it  certainly  had  struck 
two  daisies." 

An  entirely  different  account  is  that  published  in 
the  Leoti  Standard  the  week  following  the  tragedy.  It 
runs  as  follows: 

"On  Sunday  morning  the  town  of  Coronado  was  the  scene 
of  one  of  the  most  cowardly  and  dastardly  crimes  ever 
perpetrated  in  any  community  that  had  any  pretense  of 
being  civilized,  it  being  the  shooting  from  the  back  of 
seven  of  our  best  and  most  respected  citizens.  The  vie- 


168  WHEN  KANSAS  WAS  YOUNG 

tims  were  Charles  Coulter,  instantly  killed;  Wm.  Rains, 
instantly  killed;  George  Watkins,  fatally  wounded;  Frank 
Jenness,  shot  six  times;  A.  R.  Johnson,  wounded  three 
times;  A.  N.  Boorey,  shot  three  times;  Emmet  Denning, 
leg  broken  by  shot. 

"The  bitter  fight  caused  by  the  county  seat  fight,  and 
the  way  Leoti  has  beaten  her  opponent  by  might  of  right, 
and  right  of  might,  is  well  known.  Coronado  had  been 
satisfied  until  Sunday  to  carry  on  the  fight  by  trickery, 
fraud,  lies,  and  forgery,  and  in  this  way  had  managed  to 
make  the  town  and  people  despised  by  all  who  had  the 
slightest  insight  into  the  matter.  A  note  was  placed  in  Mr. 
Coulter's  hands  on  Sunday,  inviting  him  over  that  after- 
noon and  telling  him  to  bring  a  friend  or  two  with  him  and 
have  a  good  time.  It  had  been  customary  to  visit  back 
and  forth,  so  in  the  afternoon  the  crowd  of  seven  went 
over.  They  arrived  there  about  two  o'clock,  and  after  a 
couple  of  hours  of  pleasant  chatting  with  their  friends  and 
acquaintances,  they  all  got  in  the  buggy  and  started  off.  As 
they  drove  by  the  bank  building  Frank  Lilly,  standing  in 
front  of  the  bank,  applied  some  foul  name  to  Mr.  Rains,  at 
the  same  time  making  a  motion  as  if  to  draw  a  gun.  Rains 
sprang  from  the  buggy  and  said  that  Lilly  would  have  to 
fight  for  that.  Lilly  replied  that  he  had  no  gun,  where- 
upon Rains  handed  his  gun  to  one  of  the  party  in  the  buggy 
and  offered  to  fight  with  his  fists.  Lilly  refused  and  Rains 
took  his  revolver  and  returned  it  to  his  pocket.  Meantime 
Coulter,  Denning,  and  Johnson  had  gotten  out  of  the  buggy. 
Charles  and  'Red'  Loomis,  and  John  Knapp  were  standing 
near  the  bank  at  the  time.  As  Rains  put  up  his  gun  he 
remarked  that  he  could  easily  whip  Lilly.  Lilly  retaliated 
by  calling  him  a  liar,  at  which  Rains  drew  his  revolver 
and  struck  him  over  the  head,  mashing  his  hat,  but  not 
knocking  him  down.  The  men  in  ambush,  who  were  await- 
ing the  signal,  now  opened  a  volley  of  some  sixty  or  seventy- 
five  guns  on  the  unsuspecting  crowd  (from  Leoti).  Every 
man  was  shot;  shot  from  the  back*  The  four  men  on  the 
ground  were  brought  down  and  of  the  three  in  the  buggy, 
Watkins  and  Jenness  fell  out.  The  horses  were  shot  and 
started  to  run  away,  with  Boorey  still  in  the  buggy. 


EVENTS  IN  THE  EIGHTIES  169 

"After  falling  from  the  buggy  Jenness  got  on  his  feet 
and  started  toward  Leoti  on  a  run.  A  number  of  shots  were 
fired  at  him,  five  taking  effect.  The  men  of  Coronado  now 
ran  out  and  commenced  shooting  at  closer  range,  and  after 
Coulter  and  Rains  both  were  dead,  put  the  muzzles  of  their 
guns  against  them  and  fired." 

The  account  goes  on  to  say  that  when  a  party  from 
Leoti  went  over  to  Coronado  to  get  the  bodies  they 
found  them  lying  in  the  street  uncared  for.  Fourteen 
bullet  holes  were  found  in  the  body  of  Coulter,  and 
eleven  in  the  body  of  Rains.  Afterwards  complaints 
were  sworn  out  against  a  number  of  Coronado  citizens, 
who  were  arrested  and  taken  to  Garden  City  and  Dodge 
for  safe  keeping.  For  some  reason  the  case  against 
them  was  never  prosecuted.  As  one  reads  the  ac- 
counts quoted  he  can  understand  the  reason  why.  It  is 
perfectly  evident  that  neither  account  is  a  fair  state- 
ment of  the  facts.  That  Coulter  could  employ  150 
toughs  to  carry  a  county  seat  election  and  pay  the  ex- 
penses out  of  a  paltry  $750,  is  of  course  absurd.  It  is 
also  entirely  evident  that  the  men  of  Coronado  were  not 
the  long-suffering,  patient  citizens  pictured  by  the 
Herald,  and  neither  were  Coulter  and  Rains,  and  the 
others  of  the  seven  who  went  to  Coronado  on  the  fatal 
Sunday  the  estimable  peaceful  citizens  pictured  by  the 
Leoti  Standard. 

No  doubt  they  went  to  Coronado  in  a  spirit  of  brava- 
do, and  no  doubt  on  the  other  hand  the  citizens  of 
Coronado  expected  to  kill  them  when  they  came.  Leoti 
won  in  the  county  seat  contest,  as  it  undoubtedly  was 
entitled  to  do,  and  Coronado  faded  from  the  map. 
The  Herald,  after  a  little  more  than  a  year  of  troubled 
existence,  suspended,  and  barring  the  fact  that  there 
is  a  whistling  station  on  the  Missouri  Pacific  called 
Coronado,  the  town  is  but  a  memory.  Leoti  survives,  a 
town  of  some  400  people,  peaceful  and  reasonably 


170  WHEN  KANSAS  WAS  YOUNG 

prosperous.  Possibly  the  name  of  Leoti,  too,  would 
have  faded  from  the  memory  of  men  had  it  not  been 
that  ten  years  after  the  tragedy  a  man  from  that 
town,  of  striking  appearance  and  remarkable  curvature 
of  the  lower  limbs,  breezed  into  state  politics,  secured 
the  nomination  for  state  treasurer,  and  became  the 
adviser  and  manager  of  the  political  faction  at  that 
time  led  by  J.  Ralph  Burton.  Had  Burton  followed 
the  advice  of  his  faithful  friend  from  the  wind-swept 
county  of  Wichita,  he  might  perhaps  still  be  a  member 
of  the  highest  legislative  body  in  the  world. 


A  Tragedy  of  the  Frontier 

The  traveler  through  southwestern  Kansas  who 
crosses  the  county  of  Stevens  and  notes  the  orderli- 
ness of  its  thriving  little  county  seat  and  the  general 
peacefulness  of  the  dwellers  on  its  level  prairie  lands, 
can  hardly  believe  that  here  was  enacted  one  of  the 
bloodiest  dramas  of  the  frontier.  The  census  report 
for  1918  gives  the  following  brief  but  comprehensive 
summary  of  Stevens  County:  "Organized  in  1886,  area 
464,754  acres ;  population,  3,331 ;  assessed  valuation, 
$1,162,733;  miles  of  railroad,  main  track,  31.20; 
county  seat,  Hugoton,  population  553."  No  doubt  the 
present  census  will  show  an  increase  in  the  population 
of  both  the  county  and  the  county  seat,  for  south- 
west Kansas  is  slowly  coming  into  its  own. 

The  early  history  of  Stevens  County  centers  largely 
around  one  of  the  most  remarkable  men  who  ever 
figured  in  Kansas  history — Colonel  Sam  Wood.  Born 
near  Mount  Gilead,  Ohio,  in  1825,  in  the  county  ad- 
joining that  in  which  I  first  saw  the  light,  Sam  Wood 
was  in  his  young  manhood  a  contemporary  with  my 
father  and  a  worker  with  him  for  the  cause  of  aboli- 


EVENTS  IN  THE  EIGHTIES  171 

tion.  Of  Quaker  parentage,  he  showed  few  of  the 
peaceful  characteristics  of  the  members  of  that  sect 
and  from  his  earliest  manhood  until  he  met  his  death 
at  the  hand  of  his  assassin,  he  was  generally  engaged 
in  heated  controversy,  often  in  physical  encounter,  and 
was  seemingly  fascinated  by  the  excitement  and  danger 
of  conflict.  It  is  not  my  purpose  to  analyze  the  char- 
acter of  this  remarkable  man.  Admired  by  his  friends 
and  bitterly  hated  by  his  enemies,  lauded  by  some  as 
a  statesman,  humanitarian,  and  self-sacrificing  re- 
former, denounced  by  others  as  an  unprincipled  charla- 
tan and  unmitigated  scoundrel,  his  panegyrists  and 
critics  agreed  upon  one  point,  and  that  was  that  he 
was  a  man  of  remarkable  mentality  and  great  physical 
courage. 

Possessed  of  ready  wit  and  unusual  faculty  for  sar- 
casm and  repartee,  in  a  rough  and  tumble  debate  he 
had  no  superiors  and  few  if  any  equals.  Apparently 
impervious  to  either  insult  or  ridicule,  he  had  the  power 
to  drive  an  opponent  to  a  frenzy  of  exasperation  while 
himself  remaining  cool  and  placid  as  a  morning  in 
June.  Such  a  man  can  always  command  a  following, 
and  while  he  never  rose  to  the  position  of  a  great 
leader,  he  made  himself  felt  in  every  movement  with 
which  he  was  associated  and  every  cause  he  espoused. 

The  organization  of  very  few  of  the  western  Kansas 
counties  will  bear  the  light  of  honest  scrutiny.  The 
history  of  their  beginning  is  in  most  cases  a  sordid 
chapter  of  chicanery  and  graft,  where  men  with  a 
previous  record  for  honesty  and  fair  dealing  seemed 
to  throw  aside  every  principle  of  probity  and  civic 
righteousness  and  assisted  in  the  writing  of  a  bloody 
chapter  of  lawlessness  and  dishonor.  The  organiza- 
tion of  new  counties  and  the  establishment  of  county 
seats  was  a  new  industry  in  the  eighties,  which  promised 
fabulous  rewards  for  the  founders.  In  nearly  every 


172  WHEN  KANSAS  WAS  YOUNG 

case  there  were  rival  aspirants  for  the  seat  of  county 
government  and  in  order  to  win,  the  partisans  of  each 
were  generally  willing  either  to  take  part  in  or  at 
least  to  wink  at  the  commission  of  nearly  every  crime 
from  petty  larceny  to  wholesale  murder.  Perjury  was 
excused  as  a  necessity  and  ballot  box  stuffing  was  re- 
garded as  an  entirely  justifiable  and  commendable  ex- 
hibition of  local  patriotism. 

The  men  who  were  responsible  for  the  bill  forming 
the  county  of  Stevens  were  the  organizers  of  the  first 
county  seat,  Hugoton,  but  it  was  not  to  have  a  clear 
field.  Five  or  six  miles  north  was  located  the  town 
of  Woodsdale,  with  Colonel  Sam  Wood  as  its  master 
spirit.  Some  miles  south  of  Hugoton  was  located  the 
town  of  Vorhees  and  the  fertile  brain  of  Sam  Wood 
devised  a  scheme  by  which  the  forces  of  Woodsdale  and 
Vorhees  might  be  united  against  Hugoton.  There  was 
no  railroad  in  the  newly  organized  county,  but  a  pro- 
posal was  made  to  build  two  lines  east  and  west  through 
Vorhees,  leaving  Hugoton  in  a  pocket  without  hope 
of  a  railroad,  for  it  was  also  proposed  to  vote  the 
limit  of  county  bonds  to  aid  the  two  projected  lines. 
Failing  to  get  a  railroad,  it  was  figured  that  Hugoton 
would  certainly  lose  the  county  seat  and  Woodsdale 
would  become  the  seat  of  government. 

It  is  hardly  worth  while  to  discuss  the  rights  and 
wrongs  of  the  bitter  controversy  which  followed. 
Probably  there  wasn't  much  right  on  either  side.  Each 
town  had  a  newspaper  and  looking  back  over  the  old 
files  one  is  filled  with  a  certain  degree  of  admiration 
for  the  nerve  of  the  men  who  edited  them.  No  space 
was  wasted  in  journalistic  courtesies  and  if  one  were 
to  believe  the  statements  of  the  rival  editors,  both 
towns  were  inhabited  entirely  by  liars,  scoundrels,  and 
thieves,  the  description  of  whose  infamy  taxed  the  limit 
of  the  editorial  vocabulary.  Each  town  imported  a 
gunman  of  unsavory  reputation  to  uphold  the  majesty 


EVENTS  IN  THE  EIGHTIES  173 

of  the  law.  Hugoton  brought  in  a  Kentuckian  by  the 
name  of  Sam  Robinson,  who  had  already  made  a  record 
for  himself  as  a  six  shooter  artist  in  Pratt  and  Barber 
Counties  and  who  was  probably  about  as  cold  blooded 
a  murderer  as  ever  drew  a  gun.  He  was  made  city 
marshal  of  the  new  town  of  Hugoton.  Woodsdale 
selected  as  guardian  of  the  law  one  Ed  Short,  who,  I 
believe,  had  achieved  some  reputation  in  and  around 
Dodge  City  in  an  earlier  day. 

South  of  Stevens  County  lies  a  strip  of  country  at 
that  time  known  as  "No  Man's  Land,"  now  Beaver 
County,  Oklahoma,  but  then  supposed  to  be  without  the 
jurisdiction  of  either  the  state  of  Texas  or  the  United 
States.  Here  was  the  setting  for  the  bloody  drama 
on  which  the  curtain  was  to  be  rung  down  four  years 
later. 

A  meeting  was  being  held  in  the  town  of  Vorhees,  a 
joint  debate  on  the  proposition  to  vote  bonds  for  the 
two-line  railroad  project.  Colonel  Sam  Wood  was  to 
have  been  the  principal  speaker  for  the  bonds,  but  for 
some  reason  could  not  be  present.  A  deputy  sheriff, 
James  Geraud,  undertook  to  read  the  Colonel's  written 
speech,  but  was  knocked  senseless  by  a  blow  from  the 
pistol  of  Sam  Robinson,  who  from  that  time  on  dom- 
inated and  broke  up  the  meeting.  A  warrant  was  sworn 
out  before  a  Woodsdale  justice  of  the  peace  for  the 
arrest  of  Robinson,  charged  with  assault  with  intent  to 
kill.  Ed  Short,  the  Woodsdale  city  marshal,  rode  to 
Hugoton  to  serve  the  warrant.  He  saw  Robinson  sit- 
ting in  front  of  his  alleged  drug  store  and  decided  to 
shoot  first  and  serve  the  warrant  afterward.  His  aim 
was  bad  and  Robinson,  unharmed,  got  his  gun  and  re- 
turned the  fire.  A  posse  of  Hugoton  men  gathered  at 
once  and  chased  Short  back  to  Woodsdale  after  a 
running  fight,  in  which  a  good  deal  of  ammunition  was 
wasted,  but  no  one  injured. 

A  few  days   afterward,  July  25,   1888,  Robinson, 


174  WHEN  KANSAS  WAS  YOUNG 

Chamberlain,  and  Cyrus  Cook  and  wife,  of  Hugoton, 
went  to  No  Man's  Land  to  gather  plums.  Ed  Short 
and  "Bill"  Housely,  of  Woodsdale,  started  after  them 
with  the  intent  of  arresting  Robinson.  They  found 
him  in  a  claim  house,  his  horse,  a  celebrated  racer, 
stabled  in  a  half  dugout  nearby.  Robinson  succeeded 
in  mounting  his  horse  and  escaped.  Short  sent  back  to 
Woodsdale  for  reinforcements  and  the  sheriff  of  the 
county,  Cross,  organized  a  posse  composed  of  himself, 
Theodosius  Eaton,  Herbert  Tonny,  Bob  Hubbard  and 
Rolla  Wilcox,  and  started  for  No  Man's  Land.  They 
passed  through  the  town  of  Vorhees,  where  lived  a 
young  attorney,  Jesse  Dunn.  They  invited  him  to  join 
them.  He  was  willing,  but  had  no  saddle  for  his  horse 
and  it  was  too  long  a  ride  to  take  bareback.  Jesse 
Dunn  afterward  became  a  member  of  the  supreme  court 
of  Oklahoma  instead  of  a  victim  of  the  Hay  Meadow 
massacre.  What  trivial  things  often  change  the  entire 
current  of  a  man's  life! 

Sheriff  Cross  rode  on  to  the  claim  house  where 
Robinson  had  been,  found  him  gone,  and  turned  to 
ride  home.  Three  miles  below  the  Kansas  line,  they 
camped  for  the  night,  with  a  party  of  men  who  had 
gone  down  there  to  cut  and  gather  hay.  Without  ap- 
prehension of  danger  they  lay  down  to  sleep  by  the 
stacks  of  new  mown  hay,  when  a  Hugoton  posse  led 
by  Robinson  surrounded  them.  They  woke  to  face  the 
guns  of  their  captors  and  standing  in  line  disarmed  and 
helpless  they  were  shot  to  death,  all  of  them  with  one 
exception  falling  before  the  gun  of  Sam  Robinson. 
Young  Tonny  managed  by  a  quick  shift  of  position  just 
as  the  gun  aimed  at  his  breast  was  fired,  to  receive  the 
bullet  in  his  shoulder  instead  of  through  his  vitals.  He 
fell  and  feigned  death  so  well  that  his  would-be  execu- 
tioners left  him  weltering  in  his  blood,  supposing  him 
dead.  Cross,  Hubbard,  Eaton,  and  Wilcox  were  dead. 


EVENTS  IN  THE  EIGHTIES  175 

After  Robinson  and  his  crowd  had  departed  Tonny, 
desperately  wounded  as  he  was,  managed  to  get  on  a 
horse  and  rode  north  until  he  reached  friends  and 
surgical  aid. 

Nearly  two  years  later,  at  the  end  of  one  of  the 
most  sensational  trials  in  the  history  of  the  country, 
six  Hugoton  men,  Cyrus  E.  Cook,  O.  J.  Cook,  J.  B. 
Chamberlain,  Cyrus  Freese,  J.  J.  Jackson  and  Jack 
Lawrence  were  convicted  of  the  murder  of  Cross  and 
the  others.  Colonel  Sam  Wood  had  been  most  active 
in  the  prosecution  and  on  the  Fourth  of  July,  1890, 
made  the  closing  argument  for  the  Government,  speak- 
ing for  eight  hours.  Sentence  of  death  was  passed  on 
the  six  Hugoton  men  and  the  date  of  their  execution 
set  for  the  following  December.  Through  the  influence 
of  the  two  Kansas  senators,  Ingalls  and  Plumb,  a  stay 
of  execution  was  granted,  the  case  was  appealed  to 
the  supreme  court  of  the  United  States,  and  a  new  trial 
granted.  The  case  never  again  came  to  trial.  Sam 
Robinson,  who  had  done  nearly  all  of  the  killing,  had 
been  convicted  of  train  robbery  in  Colorado,  where  he 
had  gone  after  the  Hay  Meadow  massacre,  and  was  safe 
in  the  Colorado  penitentiary  when  the  trial  was  being 
held  at  Paris,  Texas. 

But  the  last  act  of  the  bloody  drama  had  not  been 
played.  Judge  Theodosius  Botkin,  Sam  Wood's  enemy, 
had  been  impeached  by  the  lower  house  of  the  Kansas 
Legislature,  but  acquitted  by  the  Senate,  and  returned 
to  his  district  more  bitter  than  ever  against  the  man 
most  responsible  for  his  impeachment.  A  charge  of 
bribery  was  filed  in  Botkin's  court  against  Wood  and 
on  June  23,  1891,  in  company  with  his  wife  he  drove  to 
Houghton  to  face  the  charge.  It  was  reported  that  a 
little  boy  playing  in  the  street  of  the  frontier  town  was 
\ieard  to  tell  his  companions,  "They  are  going  to  kill  old 
Sam  Wood  to-day."  The  court  was  being  held  in  a 


176  WHEN  KANSAS  WAS  YOUNG 

church.  About  the  time  Wood  and  his  wife  approached 
court  was  adjourned,  the  judge  left  the  church  and 
stepped  across  the  street.  Colonel  Wood  got  out  of  his 
buggy  and  started  to  enter  the  church,  when  a  Hugoton 
man,  Jim  Brennan,  drew  his  gun  and  shot  Wood  in  the 
back.  The  colonel  turned  to  run  out  of  the  church 
when  Brennan  shot  him  twice  more,  the  last  shot 
through  the  brain,  and  Wood  fell  dying  at  the  feet 
of  his  wife,  who,  standing  over  the  body  of  her  hus- 
band, pointed  dramatically  at  Judge  Botkin,  and  in 
the  language  of  Nathan,  the  prophet,  to  King  David 
said:  "Thou  art  the  man."  Brennan,  with  his  smok- 
ing pistol  in  hand,  refused  to  surrender  to  the  sheriff 
of  Stevens  County,  but  gave  himself  up  to  the  sheriff 
of  Morton  County.  He  was  arraigned,  charged  with 
murder.  The  Populist  attorney  general  of  Kansas, 
J.  N.  Ives,  went  to  Hugoton  to  assist  in  the  prosecu- 
tion. Judge  T.  B.  Wall,  of  Wichita,  was  selected  to 
preside  at  the  trial,  but  it  was  found  impossible  to 
secure  a  jury  to  try  the  case  in  Stevens  County  and 
Brennan  was  released  on  bail. 

Hard  times  came  to  Stevens  County;  the  tide  of  im- 
migration rolled  back.  Most  of  the  homesteaders 
abandoned  the  country.  The  towns  of  Woodsdale  and 
Vorhees  faded  away  entirely  and  Hugoton  at  one  time 
was  reduced  to  eleven  weather-beaten  houses.  Sam 
Robinson  was  in  the  Colorado  penitentiary  and  Ed 
Short  was  killed  in  Oklahoma  by  a  desperado  he  had 
taken  prisoner.  The  silence  of  desolation  ruled  where 
men  had  striven  and  fought  and  died  and  gained  noth- 
ing from  the  bloody  sacrifice  and  ruthless  struggle. 
Twenty  years  later  a  requisition  was  issued  for  the 
arrest  of  Jim  Brennan,  the  slayer  of  Colonel  Sam  Wood. 
Brennan  had  located  at  the  town  of  Getabo,  Okla. 
The  extradition  was  resisted  on  the  ground  of  former 
jeopardy  and  Brennan  went  free. 


EVENTS  IN  THE  EIGHTIES  177 

In  the  years  since  then  a  new  prosperity  has  come 
to  the  southwest.  The  abandoned  homesteads  are  again 
being  cultivated  and  Hugoton  is  taking  on  a  new 
growth.  In  all  the  wide  expanse  of  United  States 
territory  there  is  no  more  peaceable  and  law-abiding 
community  than  Stevens  County,  in  which  was  played 
to  a  finish  one  of  the  bloodiest  dramas  in  frontier 
history. 

Draw  Poker  on  the  Border 

The  gambling  instinct  is  almost  universal  among  the 
children  of  men.  Camouflage  the  game  in  the  form  of 
a  church  raffle  and  the  supposed  children  of  light  will 
squander  their  substance  with  as  much  interest  and 
zeal  as  the  children  of  darkness  display  when  they 
gather  about  the  faro  table  or  the  roulette  wheel. 
Possibly  among  no  class  of  men  was  the  gambling  spirit 
more  rife  than  among  the  cattlemen  and  cowboys  of 
the  range.  The  big  cattlemen  played  them  clear  up  to 
the  roof,  while  the  range  riders  wagered  with  even 
greater  recklessness  whatever  they  might  happen  to 
have  in  their  pockets,  and  after  that  was  gone,  they 
would  get  whatever  they  could  raise  on  their  other 
earthly  possessions. 

It  was  no  uncommon  thing  for  a  cowboy  to  work 
faithfully  for  six  months  on  the  range,  enduring  with- 
out complaint  all  kinds  of  privations  and  dangers ; 
then  with  his  six  months'  pay  burning  his  pocket,  he 
would  hunt  for  the  first  game  he  could  find,  and  be- 
fore morning  would  walk  out  dead  broke,  but  cheerful, 
borrow  enough  from  some  friend  or  loan  shark  to 
get  back  to  the  range,  and  begin  again  the  job  of  rid- 
ing the  lines.  As  I  have  said,  the  passion  for  gambling 
was  not  confined  to  any  class  or  condition.  Two  of  the 
men  who  most  earnestly  loved  the  great  American  game 


178  WHEN  KANSAS  WAS  YOUNG 

of  draw  poker  were  Major  Andrew  Drumm  and  Colonel 
Gus  Johnson. 

Andy  Drumm  was  a  first-class  business  man,  one  of 
the  most  successful  cattlemen  operating  between  the 
Arkansas  River  and  the  Rio  Grande.  He  died  a  few 
weeks  ago  at  the  ripe  age  of  ninety-one,  worth  $2,- 
000,000.  With  Andy  Drumm,  the  game  was  merely 
a  pastime.  He  was  counted  one  of  the  most  expert 
poker  players  among  the  men  of  the  range,  but  he  did 
not  sit  in  for  purposes  of  gain,  and  was  only  a  trifle 
less  joyous  perhaps  as  a  loser  than  as  a  winner. 

Colonel  Gus  Johnson,  head  of  the  great  Eagle  Chief 
pool,  and  manager  of  the  great  herds  carrying  the  T5 
brand,  100,000  or  more,  was  a  different  type  of  man 
from  Major  Drumm,  and  not  so  good  a  loser. 

"Gus  Johnson  has  the  impression,"  said  Major 
Drumm  to  me  one  day,  "that  he  can  play  poker.  Not 
long  ago  he  and  I  were  in  Kansas  City,  and  he  bantered 
me  for  a  little  game  of  'draw/  I  was  sort  of  hungry 
for  a  game  myself.  During  that  pleasant  evening  I 
trimmed  him  for  $1,000.  He  wasn't  satisfied.  He  is 
really  one  of  the  most  difficult  men  to  satisfy  I  ever 
saw.  He  insisted  on  playing  the  next  night.  When 
we  parted  I  had  separated  him  from  a  roll  of  $1,500. 
I  remarked  that  it  had  been  a  pleasant  evening,  but 
he  didn't  seem  to  regard  it  that  way,  and  indulged  in 
language  which  made  the  leaves  on  the  palms  in  the 
hotel  parlor  wither  and  curl  at  the  edges.  He  wanted 
revenge,  and  I  was  pleased  to  give  him  the  opportunity 
to  get  it.  The  next  evening  I  trimmed  him  again  to 
the  tune  of  $2,500.  It  wasn't  what  I  would  call  a  warm 
night  at  all,  but  I  have  seldom  seen  a  man  perspire 
more  freely.  I  wouldn't  say  at  that,  that  he  was  sat- 
isfied, but  he  was  convinced ;  but,  do  you  know,  I  think 
that  man  still  entertains  the  delusion  that  he  can  play 
poker."  And  Major  Drumm  chuckled  with  pure  de- 
light at  the  recollection. 


EVENTS  IN  THE  EIGHTIES  179 

Among  the  inveterate  gamblers  of  the  Medicine  coun- 
try was  one  Nathan  Priest,  who  had  a  few  hundred  cat- 
tle ranging  on  Elm  Creek.  Nate  was  not  a  skillful 
manipulator  of  the  pasteboards,  but  had  the  reputation 
of  being  willing  to  take  advantage  of  a  crooked  deal 
if  he  had  the  opportunity.  The  town  poker  players 
regarded  him  as  an  easy  mark,  and  when  he  made  a 
sale  of  beeves  they  rejoiced  at  the  prospect  of  the 
harvest. 

As  a  sample  of  the  manner  in  which  he  was  plucked, 
one  night  his  opponent  dealt  him  a  hand  composed  of 
three  queens  and  two  other  cards.  All  the  other  players 
dropped  out  except  Priest  and  the  dealer.  Suddenly 
the  dealer  complained  that  a  bug  had  got  in  his  eye. 
He  appeared  to  be  in  great  pain.  All  the  other  men 
except  Priest  gathered  about  him,  full  of  sympathy 
and  apparently  deeply  concerned  in  getting  the  bug  out 
of  his  eye.  Nobody  was  paying  the  slightest  attention 
to  the  cards  on  the  table  except  Priest,  who  was  busily 
engaged  in  pawing  over  the  discard  in  search  of  the 
other  queen.  It  took  him  some  time  to  find  her,  but  he 
did  at  last.  Then  the  hunt  for  the  bug  in  the  dealer's 
eye  was  rewarded.  He  expressed  great  relief  and  took 
up  the  hand  he  had  laid  on  the  table. 

Priest  began  to  raise.  The  dealer  saw  the  raise 
until  they  reached  $600.  It  had  been  ascertained  that 
this  was  the  amount  of  available  cash  Priest  had  in 
the  bank  at  that  particular  time,  and  so  the  dealer 
"called"  him.  It  is  hardly  necessary  to  say  that  the 
dealer  held  four  kings.  It  dawned  on  Priest  too  late 
what  was  the  meaning  of  that  bug  in  the  eye.  His 
check  had  already  been  taken  to  the  bank  and  cashed 
by  a  confederate  of  the  dealer. 

One  more  poker  story  comes  to  mind.  "Circle  Pete" 
was  a  family  man  and  reasonably  kind  to  his  wife  and 
children,  and  a  fair  provider,  but  possessed  of  an  un- 
governable passion  for  the  game  of  poker.  On  one  oc- 


180  WHEN  KANSAS  WAS  YOUNG 

casion,  those  were  the  days  before  the  telephone,  Pete's 
wife  sent  a  messenger  in  the  person  of  one  of  the  chil- 
dren to  look  him  up.  It  was  after  midnight,  and  she 
wanted  him  to  come  home.  The  boy  found  his  de- 
linquent parent  where  his  mother  had  supposed  he  was 
located,  and  was  met  at  the  door  of  the  room  by  a  side 
partner  of  Pete's  who,  owing  to  lack  of  funds,  had  re- 
tired from  the  game  earlier  in  the  evening.  "Tell  your 
ma,  son,"  said  the  side  partner,  "that  your  pa  lost 
his  shirt  on  a  full  hand  a  few  minutes  ago,  but  as  soon 
as  he  can  borrer  another  he  will  mosey  home.  Tell  her 
not  to  worry  none.  Pete  won't  play  no  more  to- 
night." 

Cimarron  vs.  Ingalls 

One  of  the  last  of  the  county-seat  wars  was  that  of 
Cimarron  vs.  Ingalls.  The  stories  of  the  different 
county-seat  wars  that  marked  the  history  of  the  devel- 
opment of  western  Kansas,  differed  each  from  the 
other,  but  there  was  one  point  of  resemblance  common 
to  them  all.  All  of  them  were  distinguished  by  a  disre- 
gard of  honor  and  a  willingness  on  the  part  of  both 
parties  to  the  contest  to  violate  about  every  civil  and 
moral  law  in  order  to  win.  The  county-seat  war  in 
Gray  County  did  not  differ  in  that  respect  from  the 
others,  but  it  had  wider  ramifications  and  elements  of 
almost  romance  that  distinguished  it  from  all  the  rest. 

The  central  figure  in  the  drama,  mostly  tragedy  but 
which  contained  certain  elements  of  comedy,  was  A.  T. 
Soule,  of  Rochester,  New  York,  reputed  to  be  worth 
$10,000,000,  accumulated  from  the  sale  of  Hop  Bitters 
to  a  credulous  public.  Why  Soule  came  to  Kansas  is 
somewhat  hard  to  understand.  He  had,  if  reports 
were  true,  more  money  than  he  could  spend  in  the  pur- 
chase of  mere  creature  comforts.  He  did  not  need  to 


EVENTS  IN  THE  EIGHTIES  181 

build  western  towns  or  to  endure  the  hardships,  dangers, 
and  vicissitudes  of  life  on  the  wind-swept  plains  of 
western  Kansas.  It  may  be  that  there  was  the  lure 
of  adventure  drawing  him  on,  or  it  may  be  that  he 
thought  he  saw  in  the  far-flung  prairie  landscape  where 
the  sun  rose  and  set  without  a  tree  to  cast  a  shadow 
either  in  the  morning  or  at  eve,  the  setting  for  an 
empire  of  which  he  would  be  the  builder.  At  any  rate 
he  came  and  as  a  result  of  his  coming  there  was  strife 
and  bloodshed,  the  memories  of  which  last  among  the 
older  inhabitants  even  till  now. 

For  a  man  who  had  succeeded  in  building  up  a  great 
fortune  in  a  business  venture  in  the  East,  A.  T.  Soule's 
projected  enterprises  in  Kansas  were  singularly  unsuc- 
cessful. He  built  a  great  irrigating  ditch  in  western 
Kansas,  which  did  not  irrigate,  although  he  did  succeed 
in  floating  many  hundreds  of  thousands  of  dollars  of 
bonds,  which  gilded  promises  to  pay  may  yet,  no  doubt, 
be  found  in  the  vaults  of  disappointed  eastern  pur- 
chasers. He  built  a  college  near  the  town  of  Dodge 
which  I  think  never  had  any  students,  or  if  it  did  has 
long  since  been  abandoned  as  an  institution  of  learn- 
ing. He  built  a  railroad  seventy  miles  or  so  to  the 
southwest,  but  abandoned  it.  A  few  years  ago  the  A.  T. 
&  S.  F.  built  a  branch  line  over  the  old  Soule  right-of- 
way  to  the  southwest  corner  of  the  state.  It  is  now 
one  of  the  most  prosperous  branches  of  that  great 
system.  His  plan  to  locate  the  county  seat  and  build 
a  great  town  on  the  banks  of  the  Arkansas  River  finally 
came  to  naught;  the  town  he  organized  still  lingers, 
but  has  less  than  a  hundred  inhabitants,  and  the  county 
seat  has  long  since  gone  to  its  rival. 

The  county  of  Gray  was  organized  in  1887  and  the 
temporary  county  seat  was  at  the  town  of  Cimarron. 
The  first  county-seat  election  was  called  for  October 
31.  Something  of  the  story  of  the  contest  may  be 


182  WHEN  KANSAS  WAS  YOUNG 

gathered  from  the  records  of  the  supreme  court,  be- 
fore which  body  came  the  representatives  of  the  two 
towns,  one  side  asking  for  the  removal  of  the  county 
seat  records  from  Cimarron  to  Ingalls  and  the  other 
trying  to  prevent  it,  on  the  ground  that  the  latter  town 
had  won  only  by  the  most  glaring  frauds  and  shame- 
less bribery.  The  story  told  in  the  supreme  court  re- 
port is  a  decided  instance  of  the  pot  calling  the  kettle 
black.  The  charges  made  by  each  contestant  against 
the  other  were  not  seriously  disputed  and  they  are 
worth  reading,  if  for  no  other  purpose,  to  show  that,  so 
far  as  Kansas  at  least  is  concerned,  the  people  are  not 
getting  worse,  even  if  they  are  not  making  great  moral 
strides  forward.  Here  is  the  story  told  by  the  Ingalls 
faction  about  the  Cimarronians : 

Prior  to  the  election  there  existed  in  one  of  the 
voting  precincts  known  as  Ford  precinct,  a  secret  or- 
ganization called  the  Equalization  Society,  composed 
of  seventy-two  members  whose  sole  object,  as  shown  by 
their  constitution  and  by-laws,  was  to  sell  their  votes 
solidly  to  the  town  which  would  pay  the  highest  price, 
the  money  derived  from  the  sale  to  be  divided  equally 
among  the  members,  who  were  bound  by  oath  to  vote 
solidly  for  the  town  to  which  the  sale  was  made.  For 
violation  of  this  oath  the  penalty  was  death.  Just 
prior  to  the  election,  the  record  goes  on  to  say,  one 
T.  H.  Reeves,  a  leading  Cimarron  manager,  made  a 
bargain  with  this  organization  by  the  terms  of  which 
the  Equalization  Society  was  to  receive  $10,000  and 
in  return  cast  the  solid  vote  of  the  membership  for 
Cimarron.  To  bind  the  bargain  on  the  part  of  Cimar- 
ron a  bond  signed  by  fifteen  of  the  most  prominent 
citizens  of  Cimarron  was  given  binding  them  to  the 
payment  of  the  $10,000.  The  seventy- two  votes  were 
duly  cast  by  the  members  of  the  society,  but  when  a 
committee  went  to  Cimarron  to  get  the  ten  thousand 


EVENTS  IN  THE  EIGHTIES  183 

they  were  told  to  go  to  hell,  as  the  town  had  their 
votes  and  the  bond  was  a  forgery  anyhow,  which  out- 
come brings  to  mind  old  Chester  Thomas'  definition  of 
an  honest  man,  who,  he  said  was  one  who  would  stay 
bought. 

The  majority  of  the  supreme  court,  holding  no  doubt 
that  one  side  was  as  badly  tinctured  with  fraud  as  the 
other,  and  as  Ingalls  seemed  to  have  succeeded  in  get- 
ting more  votes  in  the  ballot  box  than  Cimarron,  gave 
that  town  the  decision.  However,  Judge  Albert  Hor- 
ton,  then  chief  justice,  rendered  a  dissenting  opinion 
in  which  he  removed  the  hide  of  the  Hop  Bitters  vendor 
in  the  following  thorough  and  altogether  workmanlike 
manner. 

"A.  T.  Soule,  a  man  worth  from  $8,000,000  to  $10,000,- 
000,  and  living  in  New  York,  became  interested  in  Ingalls, 
whether  for  his  mere  pleasure  or  his  pecuniary  profit  it  is 
difficult  to  say.  He  attempted  to  make  Ingalls,  a  new  and 
very  small  place,  the  county  seat.  He  supposed  that  with 
his  immense  wealth  he  could  locate  the  county  seat  wher- 
ever he  willed.  The  principal  contesting  towns  for  the 
county  seat  up  to  within  a  few  weeks  before  the  election 
were  Ingalls,  Cimarron,  and  Montezuma.  During  the  cam- 
paign prior  to  the  election  Soule  and  his  agents  were  prodi- 
gal with  their  corrupt  funds,  with  which  to  bribe  votes 
for  Ingalls.  His  checks  for  that  purpose  for  $100,  $500 
and  other  sums  were  disbursed  throughout  the  county.  He 
said,  'If  any  man  will  tell  me  how  to  buy  the  county  seat 
I  will  freely  pay  it.'  He  proposed  to  build  a  railroad 
to  Montezuma  and  got  that  town  to  withdraw  as  a  con- 
testant for  the  county  seat.  He  and  his  agents  imported 
to  the  county  before  and  on  election  day  a  crowd  of  toughs 
and  killers." 

Finally,  urged  the  chief  justice,  if  the  petition  of 
the  Ingalls  crowd  was  granted  it  would  encourage 
"Soule  and  other  conscienceless  scoundrels"  to  engage 


184  WHEN  KANSAS  WAS  YOUNG 

in  other  and  like  schemes  of  lawlessness  and  corruption. 

In  most  of  the  county-seat  wars  the  fighting,  that  is 
the  real  killing,  commenced  before,  at,  or  immediately 
after,  the  alleged  election,  but  in  the  case  of  Gray 
County  the  bloody  finale  was  postponed  for  more  than 
a  year.  There  was  a  growing  disposition  to  depend 
more  on  courts  to  settle  the  controversies  and  rather 
less  on  guns  in  the  hands  of  hired  killers.  So  the 
tragedy  was  delayed  while  motions  for  rehearings  were 
filed  and  argued.  In  this  case,  Cimarron  had  the  ad- 
vantage of  possession ;  the  docket  of  the  supreme  court 
was  crowded  with  more  business  than  the  three  judges 
could  dispose  of  promptly,  and  Cimarron  was  taking 
advantage  of  this  delay.  Meantime,  the  IngaHs  crowd 
had  captured  most  of  the  county  offices,  among  them 
the  coveted  office  of  sheriff,  and  the  bolder  spirits  de- 
cided that  it  was  time  to  quit  fooling  with  their  rival 
and  take  the  law  in  their  own  hands. 

On  a  mild  January  day  in  1889,  a  wagon,  with  ten 
or  twelve  men  armed  and  concealed  in  the  bottom  of 
the  wagon  bed,  drove  into  Cimarron  and  halted  in 
front  of  the  courthouse.  The  men  got  out  of  the 
wagon  and,  while  part  of  them  stood  guard  at  the 
front,  the  others  swarmed  up  the  stairway  and,  pulling 
their  guns  on  the  county  clerk,  A.  T.  Riley,  ordered 
him  to  throw  up  his  hands,  while  they  took  possession 
of  the  county  records.  The  news  that  the  Ingalls  crowd 
was  raiding  the  town  spread  quickly  through  the  little 
frontier  village,  and  the  Cimarronians  rallied  for  the 
battle.  Who  fired  the  first  shot  is  a  matter  of  dis- 
pute. The  men  of  Cimarron  claim  that  the  shooting 
was  commenced  by  the  Ingalls  crowd,  which  is  entirely 
probable,  as  they  were  there  for  the  purpose  of  in- 
timidating the  inhabitants  of  Cimarron  and  getting 
away  with  the  records  before  an  effective  defense  could 
be  organized.  The  conflict  was  short  but  bloody. 


EVENTS  IN  THE  EIGHTIES  185 

J.  W.  English,  a  leading  citizen  of  Cimarron,  fell  dead 
at  the  first  fire,  and  Ed  Fairhurst  and  Jack  Bliss,  two 
other  Cimarron  men,  were  mortally  wounded.  Asa 
Harrington,  another  Cimarronian,  suffered  the  loss  of 
a  thumb,  while  another  citizen  on  taking  off  his  hat 
after  the  fray  was  over,  discovered  that  a  bullet  had 
passed  through  the  crown  and  clipped  a  lock  of  his 
hair  which  was  still  inside  the  hat.  The  owner  of  the 
head  covering  frankly  confessed  that  if  his  durned  hair 
hadn't  been  standing  up  it  wouldn't  have  been  shot  off 
that  way. 

The  Ingalls  crowd,  led  by  a  brother  of  Bat  Master- 
son,  did  not  escape  without  casualties.  Brooks,  of 
Dodge  City,  was  mortally  wounded,  and  Neal  Brown, 
G.  W.  Bolls,  and  C.  Reicheldeffer  were  severely  wounded. 
Meantime  the  county  records  were  piled  into  the  wagon 
and  gotten  out  of  town  by  the  Ingalls  partisans,  but 
three  or  four  of  the  attacking  party  were  captured  by 
the  Cimarron  men.  It  is  a  somewhat  remarkable  fact 
that  they  were  not  killed  by  the  enraged  men  of  Cimar- 
ron when  they  had  them  in  their  power,  instead  of  be- 
ing surrendered  to  the  sheriff  who  was  an  Ingalls 
partisan,  and  who  immediately  turned  them  loose.  A 
company  of  militia  under  the  command  of  General 
Murray  Myers,  of  Wichita,  was  hurried  to  the  scene. 
Order  was  restored  and  the  last  of  the  really  bloody 
county-seat  wars  of  western  Kansas  was  ended. 

It  was  the  news  of  the  county-seat  contest  in  Gray 
that  called  forth  the  following  literary  output  in  the 
New  York  Tribune: 

"The  news  that  another  county-seat  war  has  broken  out 
in  Kansas  has  found  its  way  to  New  York  by  telegraph. 
Kansas  is  again  in  the  saddle.  Once  more  a  four-mule 
team  is  attached  to  one  of  the  court  houses  and  it  is  going 
across  the  prairie  on  a  fast  trot. 

"The  existence  of  the  western   Kansas   court  house  is 


186  WHEN  KANSAS  WAS  YOUNG 

at  best  transitory  and  uncertain.  The  golden  morning  sun- 
light floods  it  in  Pottawatomie  City,  but  its  lengthening 
evening  shadow  falls  across  the  streets  of  Little  Paradise 
Valley.  One  day  the  stray  swine  of  Occidental  City  seek 
its  hospitable  shade,  the  next  some  predatory  calf  in  Big 
Stranger  bunts  open  the  back  door  and  eats  a  deed  and  two 
mortgages  while  the  register  is  taking  a  nap.  To-day  we 
mark  it  in  Grand  Junction  with  a  new  front  door  painted 
yellow,  and  the  gable  end  blown  off  by  the  last  tornado,  but 
to-night  a  band  of  determined  men  will  come  from  Rattle 
Snake  Crossing  and  haul  it  away  with  a  yoke  of  oxen,  with 
the  mayor  and  city  council  of  Rattle  Snake  pushing  on  the 
end  of  the  court  house.  The  Kansas  court  house  is  the 
'Wandering  Jew'  among  public  institutions." 

The  people  of  western  Kansas  long  ago  learned  that 
the  mere  fact  that  it  was  the  county  seat  did  not  build 
a  town  and  that  the  advantages  derived  did  not  com- 
pensate for  the  lives  lost  and  the  honor  sacrificed  in 
the  desperate  struggle  for  a  prize  much  coveted  but,  as 
subsequent  events  proved,  often  of  little  value.  For 
many  years  one  of  the  county-seat  towns  of  south- 
western Kansas  could  boast  only  of  fifteen  inhabitants ; 
two  others  did  not  have  more  than  seventy^five  in- 
habitants each,  and  the  best  block  of  lots  in  the  town 
would  not  have  sold  for  enough  to  have  paid  the  funeral 
expenses  of  the  men  whose  lives  were  sacrificed  in  the 
early-day  conflict. 

A  Steer  Was  the  Ante 

I  do  not  wish  to  create  the  impression  that  the  late 
Major  Andy  Drumm  was  entirely  addicted  to  the  game 
of  draw  poker,  for,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  he  was  a  very 
competent  and  keen  business  man,  possibly  the  best 
judge  of  cattle  among  the  men  of  the  range;  a  man 
who  rarely  made  a  mistake  in  his  judgment  of  men  and 


EVENTS  IN  THE  EIGHTIES  187 

who  was  a  close  observer  of  markets  and  industrial 
conditions.  This  was  the  reason  why  when  he  died  his 
estate  totaled  $2,000,000  in  first  class  securities,  cattle, 
and  real  estate.  Neither  was  he  a  mere  money  maker. 
The  ambition  of  his  life  was  the  creation  of  a  home 
where  friendless  boys  would  have  a  chance  to  get  an 
education,  be  taught  habits  of  industry  and  thrift,  and 
turned  out  into  the  world  well  equipped  and  useful 
citizens. 

His  love  of  the  game  of  poker  was  a  mere  pastime. 
He  liked  the  excitement  and  adventure  of  it  and  it 
may  be  said  in  passing  that  the  size  or  character  of 
the  stakes  never  daunted  him. 

After  the  Major  had  established  his  commission 
house  at  Kansas  City,  in  the  early  eighties,  there  came 
one  day  a  Texan  who  also  loved  the  game  rather  better 
than  he  did  choice  food,  and  when  the  business  of  the 
day  was  closed  he  suggested  to  Major  Drumm  that  he 
would  like  to  "sit  in"  but  that  he  was  somewhat  ham- 
pered in  the  way  of  cash. 

"That  need  not  stand  in  the  way  of  a  pleasant  eve- 
ning," remarked  the  Major,  "you  have  plenty  of  cattle. 
Suppose  we  make  the  ante  a  steer  and  two  steers  to 
'come  in.'  " 

The  novelty  of  the  proposition  appealed  to  the 
Texan  and  the  game  started.  Major  Drumm  dealt 
the  cards ;  the  man  from  Texas  theoretically  put  a 
steer  on  the  table  as  his  ante.  Drumm  came  in  with 
two  steers,  having  been  dealt  a  pair  of  tens  and  had 
the  luck  to  fill  on  the  draw,  while  the  Texan  caught  a 
bob-tailed  snag  and  passed  out. 

On  the  third  round  it  was  proposed  to  make  it  a 
jack  pot.  Three  deals  were  made  before  either  could 
open  the  pot,  when  the  Texan  drew  a  pair  of  jacks  and 
opened  with  a  fine  breeding  bull,  which  counted  the 
same  as  six  steers.  Major  Drumm  promptly  covered 


188  WHEN  KANSAS  WAS  YOUNG 

this  with  five  steers  and  a  two-year-old  heifer  and  then 
went  the  Texan  twelve  cows  better. 

The  Texan  drew  more  cards,  "saw"  the  twelve  cows 
and  raised  the  Major  fifty  steers,  twenty  two-year-old 
heifers,  four  bulls  and  twenty-five  yearling  heifers. 
Drumm  carefully  scanned  his  hand  and  then  placed  on 
the  table,  six  fine  blooded  Alderney  cows,  five  imported 
Durham  bulls,  100-grass-fed  two-year-old  steers,  fifty 
prime  to  medium  Colorado  half-breed  steers,  with  a 
side  bet  of  a  Normandy  gelding  to  cover  the  bar  bill. 

The  Texan  "called"  with  an  even  250  straight 
Kansas  wintered  Texas  half-breed  steers,  ten  Scotch 
polled  cattle,  fourteen  Texas  mustang  ponies  and  the 
deed  to  a  tract  of  land  in  the  Panhandle  of  Texas. 

When  the  cards  were  laid  upon  the  table  Major 
Drumm  had  three  aces  and  the  Texas  gentleman  had 
three  jacks.  As  the  result  of  the  game,  Drumm 
theoretically  placed  in  his  hip  pocket  750  steers,  a  large 
number  of  blooded  bulls,  a  considerable  herd  of  one  and 
two-year-old  heifers  and  cows  of  high  and  low  degree, 
ten  mustangs  and  a  ranch  in  the  Panhandle  of  Texas. 

While  cattle  were  low  in  price  at  that  time  as  com- 
pared with  present  prices,  it  is  probable  the  money 
value  of  the  stakes  in  that  remarkable  game  was  not 
less  than  $40,000.  It  was  not  a  piker  game.  This 
game  was  not  only  unique  in  the  matter  of  the  stakes 
played  for,  but  it  illustrated  the  character  of  the  men 
who  engaged  in  the  cattle  business  at  that  time. 
Probably  no  men  were  freer  spenders  or,  according  to 
the  standard  of  time,  better  sports.  The  losing  of 
$40,000  or  $50,000  worth  of  cattle,  horses  and  other 
livestock,  with  a  ranch  thrown  in,  all  in  an  evening 
session  at  poker,  did  not  dampen  the  spirits  of  the 
Texas  rancher,  and  neither  would  it  have  brought  any 
sadness  to  Major  Drumm  if  he  had  been  the  loser. 
But  it  was  some  game. 


EVENTS  IN  THE  EIGHTIES  189 

When  Hett  Was  in  Session  at  Caldwell 

In  the  issue  of  December  17,  1881,  of  the  Wichita 
Beacon,  then  a  weekly  paper,  is  found  this  brief  but 
comprehensive  editorial  statement: 

"As  we  go  to  press  hell  is  again  in  session  at  Caldwell." 

Just  then  Caldwell  was  the  wildest  town  on  the 
Kansas  border.  It  had  had  something  of  a  reputation 
for  several  years  but  at  that  time  other  wild  and 
woolly  towns  were  showing  indications  of  tameness  and 
comparative  austerity,  and  as  one  star  differeth  from 
another  star  in  glory,  so  border  towns  differed  from 
each  other  in  their  wildness  and  "wooliness,"  and  just 
then  Caldwell  led  all  the  rest. 

The  prohibitory  amendment  to  the  Kansas  constitu- 
tion had  been  adopted  the  year  before  and  the  first 
prohibitory  law  was  in  operation.  But  a  few  towns 
saw  fit  to  ignore  the  law  and  among  them  was  Cald- 
well. Its  business  men  labored  under  the  delusion  that 
saloons  and  dance  houses  were  necessary  to  the  pros- 
perity of  the  town  and  as  a  result  they  ran  wide  open, 
with  the  full  consent  and  approval  of  the  city  author- 
ities. The  few  inhabitants  of  the  town,  who  did  not 
favor  this  open  violation  of  the  law,  were  regarded  as 
troublesome  and  unreasonable  cranks  if  they  voiced 
their  sentiments,  which  few  of  them  did.  Even  the 
preachers,  for  the  most  part,  found  something  else  to 
preach  about  and  made  little,  if  any,  mention  of  the 
lawlessness  and  iniquity  immediately  at  hand. 

At  the  time  this  somewhat  startling  statement  ap- 
peared in  the  Wichita  Beacon,  the  mayor  of  Caldwell 
was  a  big,  blue-eyed,  handsome  Irishman  by  the  name 
of  Mike  Meagher.  Mike  had  been  the  city  marshal  of 
Wichita  in  the  days  when  that  town  was  the  terminus 
of  the  Texas  cattle  drive,  and  during  the  course  of  his 


190  WHEN  KANSAS  WAS  YOUNG 

administration  had  killed  a  desperado  by  the  name  of 
Powell.  Unfortunately  for  Meagher,  Powell  had  a 
cousin,  a  Missourian,  who  probably  had  been  a  bush- 
whacker during  the  Civil  War,  and  to  whom  murder 
was  a  pastime.  Jim  Talbott  was  a  typical  "bad  man." 
To  him  human  life  meant  nothing.  Mercy  would  have 
been  regarded  by  him  as  a  display  of  effeminate  weak- 
ness, and  to  "get  even"  with  one  who  had  incurred  his 
enmity  was  the  height  of  his  ambition. 

When  word  came  that  his  cousin,  Powell,  had  been 
killed,  Jim  Talbott  is  said  to  have  registered  a  vow 
that  he  would  "get"  the  man  who  killed  him.  It  was 
a  year  or  two  after  the  killing,  as  the  story  goes, 
when  "Billie  the  Kid"  was  making  his  spectacular  and 
bloody  record  in  New  Mexico,  that  he  one  day  met  Mike 
Meagher.  They  were  taking  a  drink  together  when 
"Billie  the  Kid,"  leaning  on  the  bar,  looked  at  Mike 
Meagher  with  an  evil,  mirthless  smile  and  said:  "I 
understand  that  Jim  Talbott  says  he  intends  to  kill 
you  on  sight."  Possibly  Mike  did  not  at  the  time 
take  the  warning  very  seriously,  for  like  most  of  the 
men  who  were  city  marshals  and  sheriffs  in  those 
troublous  times,  he  was  inclined  to  be  a  fatalist,  who 
had  the  impression  that,  somehow  or  other,  he  bore  a 
charmed  life. 

He  had  moved  from  Wichita  to  Caldwell  when  the 
"Windy  Wonder"  ceased  to  be  a  cattle  town,  and  be- 
cause he  was  the  type  of  man  he  was,  was  elected  mayor 
of  the  town.  A  few  months  before  his  death,  I  met 
Meagher.  He  seemed  at  that  time  as  carefree  as  a 
boy;  a  big,  good-natured  Irishman,  who  had  not 
thought  of  a  rendezvous  with  death. 

It  had  been  nearly  six  years  since  the  gunman  Powell 
had  died  as  he  tried  to  "draw"  on  the  street  in  Wichita, 
but  Jim  Talbott,  the  bushwhacker,  had  not  forgotten. 
I  might  say  here  that  while  he  was  known  on  the  border 


EVENTS  IN  THE  EIGHTIES  191 

as  Talbott,  his  real  name  was  Sherman.  Why  he  saw 
fit  to  change  it  I  do  not  know.  He  had  gathered  his 
gang  and  notified  each  of  them  of  his  purpose,  which 
was  to  kill  Mike  Meagher.  All  of  them  were  desperate 
gunmen.  Tom  Love,  Billy  Mankin,  alias  Comanche  Bill ; 
Bob  Munson,  Dick  Eddleman,  Jim  Martin,  Doug  Hill, 
Bob  Bigtree,  and  Tom  Delaney.  On  a  black  December 
day  they  met  in  Caldwell  and  laid  their  plans.  They 
were  to  start  trouble  in  one  of  the  dance  halls.  They 
knew  that  Meagher  would  take  a  hand  in  quieting  the 
disturbance,  and  in  the  course  of  the  fight  they  intended 
to  kill  him.  The  night  before  the  killing  there  was  an 
Uncle  Tom's  Cabin  show  in  town,  which  Talbott  and 
his  gang  attended  in  force.  They  interrupted  the  per- 
formance with  oaths  and  obscenity  until  finally  the 
editor  of  the  Caldwell  Post,  Tell  Walton,  protested  and 
asked  Talbott  to  refrain  from  his  foul  remarks.  For 
this,  Talbott  cursed  the  editor,  and  told  him  that  he 
would  get  him  next  day.  All  the  plans  evidently  were 
not  completed  yet,  and  the  editor's  life  was  spared. 

The  next  night  trouble  started  in  earnest.  Talbott 
and  his  gang  were  starting  out  to  "shoot  up  the  town." 
George  Speer,  proprietor  of  the  "Red  Light"  saloon 
and  dance  hall,  perhaps  as  tough  a  place  as  ever 
flourished  on  the  border,  had  joined  the  gang,  for  he, 
too,  had  his  grievance  against  Mike  Meagher.  Speer's 
brother  had  murdered  a  man  in  cold  blood  a  few 
months  before  and  Meagher  had  insisted  that  the  mur- 
derer should  be  arrested.  It  seemed  to  George  like  an 
unseemly  thing  to  make  so  much  fuss  about  so  trifling 
a  thing  as  murder.  The  city  marshal  seemed  to  have 
a  hunch  and  was  not  on  the  street  when  the  shooting 
commenced,  but  at  daybreak  Meagher  hunted  him  up 
and  told  him  to  arrest  the  men  who  were  shooting  in 
the  street.  The  marshal  found  a  part  of  the  gang 
armed  with  Winchester  rifles  and  revolvers  and  Tal- 


192  WHEN  KANSAS  WAS  YOUNG 

bott  with  a  needle  gun.  He  disarmed  one  of  the  men, 
Tom  Love,  and  started  with  him  for  the  city  jail  when 
the  other  conspirators  interfered  and  rescued  the  ar- 
rested man.  The  marshal  called  on  the  mayor  for  as- 
sistance, which  was  what  the  gang  wanted.  They 
could  easily  have  killed  the  marshal,  but  he  was  not  the 
one  they  were  after.  They  knew  that  Mike  Meagher 
would  come  to  the  rescue.  The  city  marshal  soon 
sensed  the  plot  and  begged  Meagher  to  seek  safety, 
but  to  a  man  of  Meagher5  s  temper  and  reputation  to 
run  from  danger  would  be  worse  than  death  and  Tal- 
bott  knew  it.  So  the  great  street  fight  commenced. 
The  gang  and  Meagher,  and  a  few  daring  enough  to 
come  to  his  aid,  sought  protection  behind  buildings 
which,  in  the  course  of  the  battle,  were  riddled  with 
balls.  Talbott,  his  mind  concentrated  on  just  one 
object,  the  death  of  Meagher,  slipped  round  a  building 
for  a  flank  attack.  Meagher,  generally  wary,  was 
caught  off  his  guard  and  as  he  stepped  from  behind  a 
building  Talbott  shot  him  through  the  breast  and 
Meagher  fell  mortally  wounded. 

Meantime  the  big  sheriff,  Joe  Thralls,  had  been 
notified  and  with  a  posse  of  twenty  men  was  on  his 
way  to  the  border;  but  Talbott's  vengeance  had  been 
satisfied.  The  man  he  had  sworn  to  kill  was  dead  by 
his  hand  and,  gathering  his  gang,  he  started  to  get  out 
of  town  before  the  sheriff  arrived.  It  was  a  bit  of 
retributive  justice  that  the  dance  hall  proprietor  who 
opened  the  shooting  in  the  streets,  was  shot  through 
the  heart  as  he  started  to  mount  his  horse  and  ride 
out  of  town  with  the  rest  of  the  gang.  The  others 
impressed  horses  from  a  livery  stable,  but  one  horse 
was  disabled  as  the  gang  started  to  flee  and,  with  two 
of  their  number  mounted  double,  the  murderers  fled  to 
the  southward.  A  few  miles  south  of  the  border  they 
came  across  a  couple  of  freighters'  camps  and  after 


EVENTS  IN  THE  EIGHTIES  193 

helping  themselves  to  such  provisions  as  they  could 
carry  and  part  of  the  horses,  they  rode  on  to  the 
ranch  of  W.  E.  Campbell,  where  they  helped  them- 
selves to  fresh  horses.  Campbell,  who  was  a  man  of 
hasty  temper,  was  irritated  by  the  theft  of  his  horses 
and  joined  enthusiastically  in  the  pursuit  which  was  be- 
ing conducted  by  the  frontier  sheriff.  A  few  miles 
further  south  the  murderers  took  refuge  in  a  rocky 
canyon  and  there  for  several  hours  kept  up  a  fight 
against  the  sheriff  and  his  posse,  one  of  whom  Camp- 
bell, the  rancher,  was  severely  wounded.  It  was  known 
afterward  that  some  of  the  Talbott  gang  were  wounded 
but  managed  to  escape  and  somewhere  in  the  fastnesses 
of  the  mountains  far  to  the  southwest,  they  finally 
eluded  their  captors  entirely. 

It  was  more  than  twenty  years  afterward  that  Jim 
Talbott  was  finally  apprehended  and  brought  back  to 
Kansas  for  trial  for  the  murder  of  Mike  Meagher.  But 
the  witnesses  were  scattered  or  dead.  Perhaps,  too, 
there  was  a  feeling  that  as  Caldwell  had  seen  fit  to 
defy  the  law  and  protect  lawbreakers  it  might  be  just 
as  well  to  let  bygones  be  bygones.  Whatever  the  reason 
may  have  been,  Talbott  was  never  convicted  and  Mike 
Meagher  lies  in  his  grave  unavenged.  The  days  of 
the  saloon  and  dance  hall  in  Caldwell  have  long  since 
passed  and  for  years  there  has  been  no  more  orderly 
community  in  the  great  state  of  Kansas,  and  men 
wonder  now  that  there  ever  was  a  time  when  they 
thought  that  saloons  and  dance  halls  were  aids  to 
prosperity. 

Campaigning  on  the  Frontier. 

Among  the  early  representatives  from  Kansas  was 
Judge  R.  William  Brown,  who  at  one  time  repre- 
sented in  Congress  about  twohthirds  of  the  entire 


194  WHEN  KANSAS  WAS  YOUNG 

area  of  Kansas.  He  was  also  the  first  judge  to  hold 
court  in  the  frontier  county  of  Barber.  Judge  Brown 
was  a  graduate  of  an  eastern  college,  well  educated  and 
well  read  in  the  law,  but  he  never  succeeded  in  adapt- 
ing himself  to  the  environment  of  the  frontier.  It  was 
that  perhaps  which  restricted  his  service  in  Congress 
to  a  single  term.  He  was  short-sighted  and  had  to 
wear  glasses,  which  on  the  frontier  was  a  handicap. 
For  some  reason  the  average  frontiersman  looked  on 
a  man  who  wore  glasses  as  affected,  perhaps  effeminate 
or  inclined  to  be  a  dude.  In  addition  to  wearing  glasses 
the  judge  was  a  preternaturally  solemn  man.  If  Judge 
Brown  ever  smiled  I  never  happened  to  be  present  when 
he  gave  indication  of  mirth,  and  my  acquaintance  ex- 
tended over  several  years.  Another  thing  which  marked 
the  judge  was  his  luxuriant  crop  of  whiskers  which  in 
times  of  calm  covered  his  breast  as  with  an  auburn 
mantle  and  at  other  times  were  tossed  by  the  playful 
Kansas  winds. 

During  the  later  eighties  the  Republican  state  cen- 
tral committee  gave  me  my  first  assignments  as  a  cam- 
paign speaker.  I  was  billed  to  fill  a  number  of  ap- 
pointments on  the  kerosene  circuit  in  company  with 
Judge  Brown.  I  collected  a  number  of  more  or  less 
mouldy  chestnuts  with  which  to  enliven  the  otherwise 
barren  wastes  of  my  speech.  Judge  Brown,  ex- judge 
and  ex-congressman,  was  supposed  to  do  the  heavy  work 
of  the  campaign.  I  as  a  young  man  was  going  along 
as  a  sort  of  filler.  In  deference  to  his  greater  age  and 
experience  and  accumulated  political  honors,  he  was 
to  make  the  last  speech,  while  I  made  the  opener. 

As  I  told  the  stories  I  had  collected  and  committed 
to  memory,  the  judge  sat  in  front  of  me  regarding 
me  with  profound  gravity  and,  I  thought  at  times, 
with  tolerant  sadness.  When  I  got  through  he  would 
come  forward  after  the  introduction  by  the  chairman 


EVENTS  IN  THE  EIGHTIES  195 

and  discuss  the  tariff  at  length,  without  a  story,  or 
glint  of  humor.  It  was  really  an  able  presentation  of 
the  tariff  question,  but  unfortunately  most  of  the  audi- 
ence didn't  care  a  whoop  about  the  tariff  and  perhaps 
failed  to  appreciate  the  judge's  masterly  effort. 

After  we  had  filled  perhaps  a  half  dozen  appoint- 
ments I  was  somewhat  surprised  when  the  judge  pro- 
posed to  reverse  the  order  of  the  speaking,  indicating 
that  he  didn't  consider  it  quite  fair  that  I  should  al- 
ways have  to  take  the  opening  when  the  audience  maybe 
was  just  gathering  and  hardly  settled  in  their  seats. 
I  told  the  judge  that  I  appreciated  his  generosity,  but 
really  thought  he  ought  to  close  the  meeting,  but  if  he 
insisted  I  would  do  the  best  I  could.  At  the  next 
meeting  place  the  judge  informed  the  chairman  that 
he  would  open  with  a  short  speech  and  I  would  close. 

To  my  astonishment  he  started  in  on  my  stories  and 
repeated  one  after  another  until  he  had  exhausted  my 
supply.  He  told  them  as  his  own  and  with  a  funereal 
sadness  that  I  have  never  seen  equaled.  As  he  told 
them  they  seemed  to  be  profoundly  pathetic  and  al- 
most moved  the  audience  to  tears.  They  did  not  fit 
anything  in  his  speech  but  it  was  a  knockout  for  me. 
I  simply  couldn't  readjust  myself  to  the  situation. 
When  he  got  through  I  excused  myself,  saying  that 
I  wasn't  feeling  well  and  at  any  rate  after  the  masterly 
and  exhaustive  speech  of  Judge  Brown  I  felt  there  was 
little  to  add.  So  far  as  I  was  concerned,  the  statement 
that  the  address  was  exhaustive  was  no  figure  of  speech. 
I  felt  decidely  exhausted.  I  don't  know  how  it  was  with 
the  audience.  The  judge  made  no  apology  or  explana- 
tion and  I  asked  for  none. 

At  the  next  stop,  however,  the  judge  was  to  fill  the 
date  alone  and  I  was  ordered  to  go  on  to  another  little 
frontier  town.  The  railroad  station  was  a  full  half 
mile  from  the  town  at  which  Judge  Brown  was  to 


196  WHEN  KANSAS  WAS  YOUNG 

speak  and  the  local  committee  had  evidently  decided 
that  there  ought  to  be  some  sort  of  reception.  One 
Republican  in  the  town  was  found  who  could  blow  a 
fife  and  another  had  in  some  way  become  possessed  of 
a  large  bass  drum.  These  two  constituted  the  recep- 
tion committee.  When  the  judge  alighted  from  the 
train  the  reception  committee  formed  a  procession: 
the  man  with  the  fife  in  front,  the  judge  in  the  center, 
and  the  man  with  the  bass  drum  bringing  up  the 
rear. 

The  fifer  struck  up  in  shrill  and  piercing  measure 
the  air  of  "Yankee  Doodle"  and  the  man  with  the 
bass  drum,  in  the  rear,  beat  furiously  on  his  instru- 
ment. I  never  saw  a  man  expend  more  energy  on  a 
drum  in  my  life,  and  there  came  to  me  the  story  of 
Artemus  Ward,  who  said  that  he  once  knew  a  man  who 
hadn't  a  tooth  in  his  head  and  yet  he  could  play  the 
bass  drum  as  well  as  any  man  he  ever  saw.  As  the 
train  moved  off  across  the  prairie,  I  watched  the  novel 
procession  moving  toward  the  town — the  fifer  throw- 
ing his  whole  soul  as  it  were  into  the  old  but  inspiring 
air,  the  bass  drummer  beating  furiously  on  the  re- 
sounding drum,  and  Judge  Brown  walking  gravely  be- 
tween the  two,  his  whiskers  tossed  by  the  Kansas  wind, 
calling  to  mind  the  lines  of  Whittier  telling  of  the 
flag  incident  of  old  Barbara  Frietchie: 

"All  day  long  it  rose  and  fell 
On  the  loyal  winds  that  loved  it  well." 

And  so  the  judge's  whiskers  rose  and  fell  on  the 
Kansas  winds  that  loved  them  well. 

From  there  on  our  ways  parted  in  that  campaign. 
I  do  not  know  whether  the  judge  inflicted  those  stories 
of  mine  on  any  more  audiences  or  not,  but  I  always 
cherished  a  feeling  that  he  put  one  over  on  me. 


EVENTS  IN  THE  EIGHTIES  197 

The  Tribulations  of  Early-Day  Editors 

I  have  had  occasion  heretofore  to  mention  an  early- 
day  Kansas  editorial  writer  who  was  gifted  with  bril- 
liant talents  but  who  wasted  them  with  reckless 
prodigality.  It  has  been  a  good  many  years  since  I 
have  heard  of  Jim  Chatham.  I  do  not  even  know 
whether  he  is  alive  or  dead.  He  was  instinctively  a 
bohemian,  unstable  and  dissipated,  but  with  so  many 
likable  traits  of  character  that  his  acquaintances  were 
disposed  to  forgive  his  shortcomings,  which  were  many 
and  inexcusable.  If  he  had  been  stable  and  industrious 
he  might  have  ranked  as  one  of  the  foremost  wits  of 
the  editorial  profession.  If  he  had  devoted  himself  to 
short  story  writing  I  think  he  might  possibly  have 
rivaled  O.  Henry. 

In  the  late  seventies  and  early  eighties  he  was  editor 
of  the  Short  Creek,  afterward  Galena  Daily  Repub- 
lican. In  one  of  the  issues  of  November,  1880,  under 
the  title  "Terrible  Female  Craze  for  Editorial  Gore," 
he  says: 

"What  this  community  needs  just  now  is  a  society  for 
the  prevention  of  cruelty  to  men,  especially  writin'  men, 
otherwise  editors.  There  is  entirely  too  much  blood  on  the 
moon  and  the  air  is  getting  too  fragrant  of  the  smoke  of 
battle.  There  are  too  many  bloodthirsty  women  on  the  war- 
path and  unless  some  steps  are  taken  pretty  soon  to  secure 
a  cessation  of  hostilities,  there  is  liable  to  be  a  number  of 
vacant  editorial  chairs. 

"For  three  days  a  woman  in  a  violent  rage  has  been 
promenading  the  streets  of  this  town,  looking  for  the  man 
who  writes  up  articles  for  the  Republican.  We  are  con- 
fident she  is  armed  or  she  would  not  be  so  bloodthirsty,  but 
whether  she  carries  a  pistol  or  a  cowhide  we  have  not  been 
able  to  ascertain.  She  doesn't  know  him  when  she  sees 
him  and,  thanks  to  a  generous  public,  no  one  will  point  him 
out.  She  boils  over  at  every  street  corner  and  the  object 


198  WHEN  KANSAS  WAS  YOUNG 

of  her  search  hasn't  eaten  a  hearty  meal  for  three  days, 
and  besides  his  hair  is  rapidly  turning  gray.  One  woman 
has  brought  suit  against  the  paper  for  libel  and  wants  three 
thousand  dollars  to  patch  up  her  wounded  reputation. 
We  don't  care  for  that,  however.  She  has  only  to  call 
and  the  money  will  be  paid  without  a  grumble,  but  the 
cowhide  and  that  pistol  or  perhaps  a  loaded  cane,  is  what 
is  causing  a  good  deal  of  uneasiness.  We  want  to  resign  in 
favor  of  a  solid,  cast-iron  man  with  a  Bogardus  kicker 
attached  to  each  heel. 

"It  was  only  yesterday  afternoon  that  a  stout,  ruddy- 
faced  lady  suddenly  entered  the  sanctum  and  inquired 
for  the  editor.  That  individual  made  no  reply,  but  dis- 
appeared through  the  scuttle  hole  into  the  garret  as  sud- 
denly as  though  taken  up  by  a  cyclone.  In  his  hasty  en- 
deavor to  reach  the  farthest  corner  of  the  garret,  he  fell 
through  the  plastering  and  hung  down  into  the  police  court 
room,  suspended  between  the  ceiling  and  the  floor  by  the 
well  worn  and  unsafe  seat  of  his  unmentionables.  When 
he  was  relieved  from  that  ludicrous  predicament  the  ma- 
tronly woman,  who  proved  to  be  a  lady  friend  from  the 
country,  came  forward  and  said  her  'old  man'  had  sent  us 
a  few  apples  to  eat  during  the  long  winter  evenings. 

"The  man  who  does  the  collecting  has  had  both  his  eyes 
blacked  by  irate  females,  simply  because  he  is  an  attache 
of  the  Republican  and  the  carrier  boys  all  carry  welts 
across  their  spinal  columns  as  large  as  a  ship's  hawser. 

"One  typo  hasn't  been  out  of  the  office  for  three  days 
and  he  begins  to  think  it  is  about  time  to  break  his  fast. 
The  other  one,  who  is  more  intrepid,  has  had  two  ribs 
broken  and  his  nose  rests  on  the  side  of  his  face  like  a 
maiden's  head  on  a  Sunday  shirt  front  after  evening 
services. 

"The  young  man  who  wheels  offal  from  a  Main  Street 
butcher  shop  was  mistaken  for  the  editor  of  the  Miner,  yes- 
terday morning,  by  an  enraged  female,  who  hit  him  in  the 
eye  with  a  rotten  potato. 

"A  four-tined  clerk  in  an  Empire  City  livery  stable  was 
yesterday  morning  chased  three  blocks  and  kicked  every 
jump,  by  a  frenzied  female  who  mistook  him  for  the  editor 
of  the  Joplin  News. 


EVENTS  IN  THE  EIGHTIES  199 

"The  'old  man'  of  the  west  end  of  the  Herald  has  been 
hiding  out  in  the  brush  for  three  days.  His  nose  has  been 
battered  into  the  shape  of  a  Texas  cow  horn,  and  the  finger- 
nail marks  on  his  body,  where  his  shirt  front  used  to  rest, 
give  that  part  of  his  person  the  appearance  of  a  map  of 
the  Short  Creek  mining  district.  He  wears  more  beef  steak 
on  his  left  eye  than  he  has  eaten  for  six  months.  He  says 
that  he  has  had  enough  of  this  blarsted  country  and  intends 
returning  to  England,  where  women  are  amenable  to  the 
law. 

"The  local  editor  of  the  Herald  has  been  in  bed  nearly 
a  week  and  his  head  is  as  hairless  as  the  other  side  of  a 
tomb  stone.  How  the  proprietor  of  the  Miner  has  suf- 
fered we  are  not  prepared  to  say,  but  from  the  tone  of  the 
following,  which  appears  in  yesterday's  Herald,  we  judge 
that  he  is  out  of  town: 

'  'Yesterday  a  well  dressed  and  respectable  looking 
woman  stepped  into  Halyard's  hardware  store  and  pur- 
chased half  a  dozen  cartridges,  with  which  she  quietly 
proceeded  to  fill  the  chambers  of  her  revolver.  When  asked 
why  she  carried  the  weapon,  she  replied  that  it  would  soon 
be  made  public  if  a  certain  party  came  in  on  the  Gulf 
train.' 

"We  have  telegraphed  every  station  agent  along  the  Gulf 
road  to  advise  him  to  go  on  to  China. 

"We  no  longer  have  a  free  press.  It  has  been  muz- 
zled, and  that,  too,  by  women,  who  seem  determined  not 
only  to  rule,  but  to  ruin  also." 


STRIKING   PERSONALITIES 

Jerry  Simpson 

AMONG  the  unique  and  remarkable  characters 
brought  to  public  notice  and  notoriety  by  the 
political  upheaval  of  thirty  years  ago,  no  one 
attained  to  greater  fame  or  secured  wider  celebrity  than 
"Sockless"  Jerry  Simpson,  of  "Maidson  Lodge,'*  as 
the  facetious  newspaper  reporters  dubbed  him.  Jerry 
was  born  in  the  province  of  New  Brunswick  in  1842,  of 
Scotch  ancestry.  His  father  migrated  to  the  United 
States  when  Jerry  was  a  very  little  boy  and  settled  in 
the  state  of  Michigan.  Although  of  an  alert  mind 
and  possessed  of  a  real  hunger  for  knowledge,  Jerry's 
educational  opportunities  were  exceedingly  limited.  He 
was  illiterate  so  far  as  the  branches  taught  in  the 
schools  were  concerned,  but  a  voracious  reader  and, 
endowed  with  a  remarkable  memory,  he  managed  to 
store  his  mind  with  more  than  an  ordinary  equipment 
of  really  good  literature,  so  that  he  was  entitled  to  be 
called  a  well-read  man.  At  the  outbreak  of  the  Civil 
War  he  enlisted,  but  served  only  a  few  months  until 
discharged  for  disability.  After  the  close  of  the  war 
he  became  a  sailor  on  the  great  lakes,  and  gradually 
rose  to  the  position  of  captain  on  a  lake  freighter,  a 
position  which  requires  a  large  degree  of  resourceful- 
ness and  courage.  During  a  fearful  storm  his  ship 
was  driven  ashore  near  Ludington  and  it  was  largely 
owing  to  the  masterful  courage  and  coolness  of  Jerry 
Simpson  that  the  lives  of  all  the  crew  were  saved. 

200 


STRIKING  PERSONALITIES  201 

During  the  seventies  he  decided  to  come  to  Kansas 
and  settled  in  Jackson  County,  where  he  engaged  in 
farming  and  stock  raising  with  some  success,  but  con- 
cluded that  there  were  better  opportunities  in  the  free- 
range  country  and  came  to  Barber  County  along  in 
'83  or  '84.  It  was  an  unfortunate  time  to  get  into 
the  cattle  business.  He  had  hardly  got  fairly  started 
when  the  terrible  winter  of  '85-86  came  on  and  nearly 
wiped  his  herd  off  the  face  of  the  earth.  His  cows 
died  faster  than  he  could  skin  them  and  spring  found 
him  nearly  broke.  He  had  come  to  the  county  with 
some  $10,000. 

In  1886  the  Union  Labor  party  was  organized  and 
the  old-time  Greenbackers,  of  whom  Jerry  was  one, 
promptly  joined  it.  Jerry  had  already  demonstrated 
some  ability  as  speaker  in  country  lyceums  and  the 
like,  and  his  party  in  Barber  County  selected  him  as 
its  candidate  for  the  Legislature.  I  happened  to  have 
the  honor  of  running  against  him  and  while  I  defeated 
him  it  was  not  a  victory  to  blow  about. 

Two  years  later  he  was  again  a  candidate  and  as 
that  happened  to  be  the  year  when  Kansas  rolled  up 
a  Republican  majority  of  82,000,  Jerry  was  buried 
under  the  general  landslide.  There  were  those  who  pre- 
dicted that  he  would  never  come  back  again,  but  they 
had  no  vision  of  the  future.  Eighteen  eighty-nine  was 
the  greatest  corn  year  of  all  Kansas  history,  but  the 
price  went  down  until  corn  sold  at  ten  cents  per  bushel 
or  less  and  was  burned  for  fuel  all  over  Kansas.  A 
few  years  before  the  people  of  the  state  had  plunged 
into  debt  with  a  recklessness  seldom  if  ever  equaled  and 
now  pay  day  had  come  and  ten-cent  corn  and  forty- 
cent  wheat  to  pay  with.  It  is  not  very  remarkable 
that  the  people  saw  red,  and  talked  of  the  altar  of 
Mammon,  the  great  red  dragon,  and  the  "crime  of  73." 
The  words  of  the  agitator  fell  on  fertile  ground.  The 


202  WHEN  KANSAS  WAS  YOUNG 

Farmers'  Alliance  spread  like  a  fire  on  the  dry  prairie 
driven  by  the  high  wind.  Too  late  the  Republican 
leaders  became  alarmed  and  decided  that  the  way  to 
retain  power  was  to  get  up  a  platform  about  as  radical 
as  anything  suggested  by  the  Alliance  and  then  release 
the  candidate  from  all  party  allegiance  and  authorize 
him  to  pay  no  attention  to  the  party  caucus.  The  con- 
cessions only  caused  derision  and  jeers  on  the  part  of 
the  Alliance  men  and  it  was  in  this  frame  of  mind 
that  Alliance  delegates  met  in  the  spring  of  1890  to 
nominate  a  candidate  for  Congress.  Jerry  Simpson 
went  to  the  convention  as  a  delegate,  but  his  name  had 
not  been  mentioned  as  a  probable  candidate.  S.  M. 
Scott,  of  McPherson,  the  author  of  a  pamphlet  on 
the  sub-treasury,  was  the  man  to  be  nominated,  but 
Scott  could  not  get  it  into  his  mind  that  it  was  possible 
to  overcome  the  majority  of  14,000  rolled  up  by  the 
Republicans  only  two  years  before  and  pushed  the 
proffered  honor  aside.  Jerry  Simpson  had  been  called 
on  to  make  a  speech  and  caught  the  crowd.  With 
Scott  out  of  it,  the  delegates  turned  to  the  ex-sailor 
and  nominated  him.  They  builded  better  than  they 
knew.  Under  the  conditions  then  prevailing  Jerry 
Simpson  was  an  ideal  candidate.  He  was  a  good  talker, 
possessed  of  a  ready  wit,  and  with  an  instinctive  and 
correct  appraisement  of  the  value  of  publicity.  A 
correspondent  of  the  Wichita  Eagle  accused  him  of 
wearing  no  socks.  Jerry  did  not  attempt  to  deny  the 
charge  and  charged  in  turn  that  his  opponent,  Colonel 
J.  R.  Hallowell,  wore  silk  hose.  He  wove  this  skillfully 
into  his  speeches  and  roused  unbounded  enthusiasm  by 
the  turn.  He  confessed  his  poverty  and  his  audience, 
carried  away  with  the  zeal  of  crusaders,  threw  the  few 
dollars  they  had  in  their  pockets  on  to  the  platform  to 
help  pay  the  campaign  expenses  of  their  candidate. 
Jerry  was  a  good  storyteller.  His  stories  were  not 


STRIKING  PERSONALITIES  203 

new,  but  an  old  story  well  told  is  often  as  effective  as  a 
brand  new  one.  He  covered  the  Republican  platform, 
adopted  at  Dodge  City,  with  ridicule  and  amid  howls  of 
delight  told  the  following  story:  A  Jew  and  an  Irish- 
man were  crossing  a  stream  in  a  boat  when  it  occurred 
to  the  Irishman  that  he  would  convert  the  Jew.  He 
demanded  that  the  descendant  of  Abraham  renounce 
his  faith  and  acknowledge  the  divinity  of  Christ  and 
the  Virgin  Mary.  The  Jew  refused,  whereupon  the 
Irishman  threw  him  out  into  the  water.  He  came  up 
choking  and  sputtering  and  tried  to  climb  back  into 
the  boat,  but  the  Irishman  refused  to  let  him  in  unless 
he  would  confess  and  give  up  his  "dombed  hathenism." 
The  Jew  still  refusing,  the  Irishman  shoved  him  under 
again  and  held  him  there  until  he  was  almost  drowned. 
At  last  he  let  him  come  to  the  surface  gasping  and 
almost  speechless.  When  he  was  able  to  talk,  seeing 
no  evidence  of  mercy  on  the  part  of  the  Hibernian  he 
said  that  he  would  renounce  and  confess.  "Oim  glad 
to  hear  that,"  said  the  Irishman,  "but  Oim  av  the 
opinion  that  if  iver  yez  git  to  land  ye  dombed  sheeney, 
yez  will  take  it  back  so  Oim  goin'  to  drown  yez  now 
and  save  yure  immortal  soul."  The  application  was 
that  the  Republican  party  should  be  killed  while  it  was 
in  a  repentant  frame  of  mind. 

The  result  of  the  election  was  a  surprise  even  to  the 
most  sanguine  of  Jerry's  supporters.  A  Republican 
majority  of  14,000  was  succeeded  by  a  Populist  major- 
ity of  more  than  8,000  and  Jerry  Simpson  suddenly 
found  himself  one  of  the  most  talked  of  men  in  the 
United  States.  To  his  credit  let  it  be  said  that  he  did 
not  lose  his  head.  In  Congress  he  rapidly  acquired 
polish  and  was  recognized  as  the  leader  of  his  party. 
His  political  views  broadened;  his  crudities  of  speech 
were  mostly  abandoned.  He  held  his  own  in  the  rough 
and  tumble  debates  in  the  lower  house  and  gained  favor 


204  WHEN  KANSAS  WAS  YOUNG 

with  the  then  speaker  of  the  house,  Tom  Reed,  of 
Maine.  In  1892  he  was  re-elected,  but  the  Populist 
party  had  already  passed  the  crest  and  was  on  the 
decline.  His  majority  of  more  than  8,000  was  reduced 
to  less  than  2,000  and  two  years  later  was  wiped  out 
entirely,  when  Chester  I.  Long  defeated  him  by  a  com- 
fortable majority.  In  1896  the  free  silver  issue  swept 
over  Kansas  and  Jerry  was  elected  for  the  third  time, 
but  with  the  subsidence  of  that  he  was  defeated  and 
retired  from  public  life.  It  may  be  said  for  him  that 
while  he  was  an  original  Greenbacker  he  never  was  at 
heart  in  favor  of  free  and  unlimited  coinage  of  silver 
at  the  ratio  of  sixteen  to  one.  Naturally  possessed  of 
a  keen  and  logical  mind  he  saw  the  fallacy  of  the  ar- 
gument in  favor  of  a  fixed  ratio  between  the  two  metals, 
but  believed  in  the  Greenback  theory  that  there  should 
be  no  intrinsic  value  in  money. 

Jerry  was  naturally  a  radical  both  in  politics  and 
religion.  Before  he  became  especially  interested  in 
politics  he  was  known  to  his  acquaintances  as  a  "free 
thinker"  or  infidel.  He  had  accumulated  a  number  of 
books  defending  his  views,  such  as  Thomas  Paine's 
"Age  of  Reason,"  Huxley,  and  Ingersoll.  He  loaned 
them  to  a  family  by  the  name  of  Jesse  to  read,  but 
shortly  afterward  most  of  the  Jesses  were  converted 
by  an  evangelist  and  decided  that  the  first  thing  they 
ought  to  do  was  to  make  a  bonfire  of  Jerry  Simpson's 
books,  which  they  did.  Robert  Jesse  became  imbued 
with  the  belief  that  the  Almighty  had  made  him  immune 
to  hurt  from  guns  and  to  prove  his  faith  offered  any 
man  $100  who  would  take  a  shot  at  him.  His  neighbors 
refused  to  take  him  at  his  word  and  had  him  incar- 
cerated in  the  hospital  for  the  insane.  In  his  lake 
experience  Jerry  Simpson  had  learned  to  be  a  very  fair 
rough  and  tumble  fighter,  although  never  inclined  to 
quarrel.  A  burly  blacksmith  by  the  name  of  Corson 


STRIKING  PERSONALITIES  205 

became  offended  at  a  remark  made  by  Jerry  and  an- 
nounced that  he  intended  to  whip  him  and  give  him  a 
plenty  while  he  was  at  it.  He  attacked  Jerry  without 
warning,  but  got  the  surprise  of  his  life.  In  less  than 
a  minute  it  was  Corson  who  was  whipped,  while  Jerry 
had  not  suffered  so  much  as  a  scratch.  Afterward 
Corson  became  one  of  Jerry's  greatest  admirers  and 
staunchest  political  supporters. 

It  has  been  a  good  many  years  now  since  Jerry  Simp- 
son's body  was  laid  to  rest.  As  the  years  speed  on 
there  is  a  growing  kindliness  that  honors  his  memory. 
He  was  a  man  of  more  than  ordinary  native  ability; 
a  character  such  as  could  be  produced  only  in  a  coun- 
try of  free  speech  and  the  open  door  of  opportunity. 


Dynamite  Dave 

A  great  many  people  in  Kansas  and  Oklahoma,  and 
for  that  matter  a  great  many  people  outside  of  these 
two  states,  have  read  the  remarkable  stories  which 
originated  in  the  brain  of  Dave  Leahy.  It  has  been  a 
good  many  years  now  since  the  sympathy  of  thousands 
of  people  was  wrought  up  by  the  story  of  a  fair-haired 
child  who  was  so  unfortunate  as  to  fall  into  a  bored 
well  out  in  western  Kansas.  The  mother  of  the  child 
missed  it  and  began  a  frantic  search,  when  her  atten- 
tion was  attracted  to  a  plaintive  cry  coming  from  out 
of  the  ground.  Then  she  discovered  that  her  child 
had  fallen  down  into  this  bored  well.  Its  body  fitted 
the  hole  pretty  close,  which  prevented  it  from  slipping 
down  to  the  bottom.  The  story  went  on  to  state  that 
the  neighbors  were  called  in  and  then  began  the  des- 
perate effort  to  rescue  the  child.  The  men  worked  by 
relays  day  and  night,  digging  down  about  the  pipe. 
Eastern  papers  got  hold  of  the  story  and  wired  for 


206  WHEN  KANSAS  WAS  YOUNG 

particulars.  Dave  Leahy  discovered  that  he  had 
opened  a  literary  mine,  so  to  speak.  It  was  a  valuable 
space  filler  and  he  continued  the  story.  As  the  frantic 
rescuers  got  near  the  unfortunate  little  one  he  per- 
mitted it  to  slip  down  a  few  feet,  so  prolonging  the 
agony  and  incidentally  gathering  more  financial  re- 
ward. The  child  was,  according  to  Dave,  finally  res- 
cued, little  the  worse  for  its  thrilling  experience. 

When  John  L.  Waller  was  consul  to  Madagascar  he 
got  in  bad  with  the  French  Government  on  account  of 
certain  timber  concessions.  He  was  arrested  and 
brought  to  France,  where  he  was  for  a  considerable 
time  imprisoned.  This  suggested  to  Dave  Leahy  the 
story  of  some  Frenchman,  whom  he  reported  captured 
by  Oklahoma  negroes  in  revenge  for  the  treatment  ac- 
corded John  L.  Waller,  a  man  of  their  race,  by  the 
French  Government.  The  story  was  that  this  French- 
man was  held  in  a  cave  in  eastern  Oklahoma.  The 
story  crossed  the  ocean  and  came  to  the  notice  of  the 
French  Government,  which  through  its  department  of 
state  took  the  matter  up  with  our  department  of  state. 
Our  Government  knew  nothing  about  the  matter,  but  at 
the  urgent  request  of  the  French  Government  sent  a 
special  agent  to  Oklahoma  to  investigate.  No  French- 
man had  been  kidnapped.  There  was  no  organization 
of  negroes  and  no  cave  in  the  locality  described  in  the 
story.  After  considerable  diplomatic  correspondence 
the  French  Government  was  satisfied  that  no  citizen 
of  France  had  been  outraged. 

Dave's  full  name  is  David  Demosthenes  Leahy,  but 
a  Caldwell  jeweler  who  did  not  know  much  about 
Demosthenes,  insisted  on  dubbing  him  "Dynamite 
Dave"  and  the  title  stuck.  Dave's  first  location  in 
Kansas  was  in  the  town  of  Caldwell,  then  one  of  the 
wildest  towns  of  the  border.  He  used  to  tell  the  story 
that  he  got  his  first  job  as  a  grocery  clerk  and  slept 


STRIKING  PERSONALITIES  207 

in  the  store.  He  made  his  bed  in  the  front  window 
and  when  he  woke  up  in  the  morning  and  looked  out 
there  were  three  dead  men  lying  in  the  street  and  on  the 
sidewalk. 

Afterward  he  went  into  the  newspaper  business  and 
established  a  reputation  as  a  writer.  It  was  in  the 
spring  of  1887  that  Dave  located  in  Barber  County  in 
the  town  of  Kiowa.  A  corporation  had  been  organized 
which  leased  the  Kiowa  Herald,  the  paper  which  had 
been  started  by  Dennis  T.  Flynn.  Dave  was  employed 
as  editor  and  manager.  He  was  at  that  time  a  ran- 
tankerous  Democrat  and  insisted  that  he  should  be 
permitted  to  run  a  Democratic  paper.  His  strong 
Democratic  proclivities  may  be  judged  from  the  fol- 
lowing notice  which  appeared  in  a  Republican  con- 
temporary under  date  of  June  14,  1887: 

"D.  D.  Leahy  is  the  proud  father  of  a  big  bouncing 
boy  born  to  his  wife  on  Wednesday  last  at  Caldwell. 
'Dynamite'  feels  stuck  up,  of  course,  but  we  venture  the 
son  doesn't,  anyway  he  won't  we  know  when  he  learns 
that  his  dad  has  named  him  Cleveland  Thurman.  It  may 
be,  however,  that  Mrs.  Leahy  will  have  something  to  say 
about  that  and  thus  save  the  baby." 

Dave's  style  of  writing  at  that  time  in  controversy 
with  a  rival  editor  was  to  treat  him  as  "Our  Loathed 
Contemporary."  I  quote  the  following  references  to 
another  Barber  County  editor:  "That  unmitigated 
scoundrel  and  professional  blackleg,  the  bilious  nonde- 
script that  runs  the  "  In  another  issue  he  un- 
burdens himself  about  the  same  editor  whom,  I  think,  to 
that  time  he  had  never  seen,  as  "The  non  compos  mentis 
journalist;  this  flagrant  blatherskite;  this  audacious 
poltroon;  this  cantankerous  jackass;  this  lunatic  at 
large ;  this  brainless,  chicken-eating  dude."  In  another 
issue  he  refers  to  the  same  loathed  contemporary  as  a 


208  WHEN  KANSAS  WAS  YOUNG 

"Brachylurous,  besulcanus  amphibious  boralapus." 
That  I  think  held  the  loathed  contemporary  for  a  while 
as  he  had  no  idea  what  Dave  meant  and  Dave  not  being 
certain  about  it  either,  they  just  let  it  go  at  that. 

At  that  time  one  Andrew  Jackson  Jones  was  county 
attorney.  After  his  election  Jones  and  his  partner 
entered  into  a  pleasant  and  profitable  arrangement  by 
which  they  dissolved  partnership,  although  still  having 
an  office  together.  The  word  was  given  out  that  those 
charged  with  violations  of  law,  especially  the  prohibi- 
tory law,  would  find  it  to  their  advantage  to  consult 
the  former  partner  of  the  county  attorney.  Under  this 
arrangement  the  former  partner  collected  a  monthly 
fee  of  $25  from  each  of  the  jointists  in  the  county  and 
divided  with  the  county  attorney.  While  at  that  time 
Dave  was  violently  opposed  to  the  prohibitory  law  he 
decided  that  the  county  attorney,  whom  he  had  never 
seen,  was  not  playing  fair  with  the  Kiowa  jointists. 
Under  date  of  June  14  I  quote  from  a  column  editorial 
roasting  Jones  to  a  deep  rich  brown,  the  following: 
"Mr.  Jones,  the  county  attorney,  came  down  from 
Medicine  Lodge  on  Monday  night  last  under  cover  of 
the  midnight  darkness  to  pounce  upon  some  unsuspect- 
ing poor  wretch  that  might  perchance  be  dispensing 
the  prohibited  fluid  in  violation  of  law."  Mr.  Jones 
had  in  fact  gone  down  to  see  if  the  "poor  wretches" 
who  "might  perchance  be  dispensing  the  prohibited 
fluid"  were  all  coming  across  properly. 

Some  reader  of  the  Journal  came  the  next  day  to 
see  Dave  and  told  him  that  Jones  had  the  reputation 
of  being  a  very  "bad  man  from  Kentucky"  and  that  in 
all  probability  he  would  be  looking  for  the  editor  with 
a  gun.  A  few  days  after  that  a  man  wearing  long  and 
flowing  whiskers  entered  the  office. 

"My  name  is  Jones,  the  county  attorney.  I  have 
observed,  Mr.  Leahy,  that  you  are  getting  out  a  real 


STRIKING  PERSONALITIES  209 

true  blue  Democratic  paper.  I  want  to  congratulate 
you,  as  a  loyal  and  life  long  Democrat,  sir,  from 
Kaintucky.  What  we  need  in  this  country,  sir,  are 
editors  who  will  preach  the  true  Democracy,  sir.  I 
want  to  subscribe  for  twenty-five  copies  of  your  paper, 
sir.  Here  are  the  names  and  I  want  to  pay  for  them 
now."  Whereupon  Jones  pulled  out  a  roll  of  bills  and 
paid  for  twenty-five  subscriptions  for  a  year  in  ad- 
vance. 

As  a  result  of  this  unexpected  visit  I  find  in  the 
issue  of  July  31,  1887,  the  following  local  mention: 

"County  Attorney  Jones  was  a  caller  at  our  sanctum 
yesterday  and  notwithstanding  the  fact  that  a  little  misun- 
derstanding has  existed  recently  between  him  and  the  Her- 
ald, nevertheless  he  showed  no  signs  of  belligerency." 

It  is  only  fair  to  state,  however,  that  the  county 
attorney  did  not  succeed  in  entirely  squaring  himself 
with  "Dynamite  Dave"  as  was  indicated  by  the  follow- 
ing notice  in  the  issue  of  August  4,  1887,  which  read 
as  follows: 

"We  expect  to  prove  that  the  operation  of  a  certain 
statute  law  has  been  suspended  for  a  stipulated  sum  per 
month,  and  not  only  that,  but  we  expect  to  prove  that  it 
is  possible  for  horse  thieves  and  other  high-handed  vil- 
lains to  escape  the  penalty  of  the  law  for  sums  of  money 
ranging  from  $250  up  to  $1,000,  according  to  the  ability 
of  the  criminals,  their  pals  and  friends  to  pay." 

If  the  first  notice  called  for  twenty-five  paid  up  sub- 
scriptions from  County  Attorney  Jones  that  one  ought 
to  have  called  for  at  least  fifty. 

Those  who  know  Dave  now  may  be  surprised  to  learn 
that  he  once  aspired  to  dramatic  honors.  He  was  a 
member  of  the  Kiowa  Home  Dramatic  Club  which  put 
on  the  stage  the  play,  "Capitolia,  or  the  Hidden 


210  WHEN  KANSAS  WAS  YOUNG 

Hand."  Dave  took  the  part  of  the  heavy  villain,  Black 
Donald.  After  the  rendition  of  the  play  the  following 
brief  account  of  his  effort  appeared  in  the  Herald: 
"The  heavy  demoralized,  knock-down  and  drag-out 
villain  of  the  play  was  D.  D.  Leahy,  who  owing  to  a 
serious  cold  which  he  tried  to  drown  in  brandy  and 
water,  could  not  perform  the  part  so  well  as  if  his 
physical  condition  had  been  enjoying  its  usual  boom." 
This  is  not  up  to  his  usual  literary  style  at  that  time, 
which  might  indicate  that  he  and  his  cold  were  still 
partially  submerged  at  the  time  it  was  written. 

His  stay  in  Barber  County  covered  a  period  of  only 
six  months,  but  as  a  Barber  County  man  remarked, 
he  managed  to  raise  considerable  hell  for  the  time  he 
was  there. 

During  the  past  few  years  Dave  has  been  content 
to  follow  the  uneventful  and  monotonous  life  of  an 
office  holder.  I  might  also  say  that  since  his  short  and 
stormy  sojourn  in  Barber  he  has  changed  his  views 
about  everything  except  religion.  He  is  no  longer  a 
Democrat.  He  is  an  ardent  Prohibitionist  and  an 
advocate  of  woman  suffrage.  In  religion  he  is  still  a 
believer  in  the  infallibility  of  the  Pope  and  a  devoted 
adherent  of  the  Catholic  Church. 


Two  Frontier  Doctors 

Along  in  the  middle  eighties  two  physicians  settled 
in  the  town  of  Medicine  Lodge.  One  of  them,  Doctor 
Meinke,  I  think  was  born  on  foreign  soil  and  talked 
with  a  rather  pronounced  foreign  accent.  Doctor 
Dunn  was  American  born.  Neither  of  them  was  noted 
in  his  line,  but  they  had  one  trait  in  common :  they  were 
investigators  and  genuinely  interested  in  their  pro- 
fession. 


STRIKING  PERSONALITIES  211 

Doctor  Meinke  was  a  good-natured,  likable  sort  of 
man,  who  made  friends  readily  and  soon  began  to 
gather  up  his  share  of  what  practice  there  was  in  the 
little  frontier  town,  but  it  may  be  said  in  passing  that 
it  was  a  healthy  country  and  then  the  inhabitants  were 
accustomed  to  staying  out  doors  the  most  of  the  time, 
which  tended  to  cut  down  the  business  of  the  doctors. 
In  the  course  of  a  minor  operation,  perhaps  treating 
a  carbuncle,  Doctor  Meinke  unfortunately  received  a 
scratch  on  the  hand  which  became  infected.  He  failed 
to  give  it  the  prompt  attention  he  should  have  done, 
and  at  any  rate  the  value  of  antiseptics  was  not  so  well 
known  then  as  now.  The  infection  spread  rapidly  until 
there  was  a  well  developed  case  of  blood  poisoning, 
which  did  not  yield  to  such  remedies  as  were  at  hand. 
Within  two  days  the  case  was  beyond  control,  at  least 
beyond  control  of  the  physicians  whose  services  could 
be  obtained,  and  Meinke  with  a  cheerful  courage  I  have 
rarely  seen  equaled,  took  to  his  bed  and  prepared  to  die. 

Apparently  without  any  fear  of  death,  he  was  deeply 
interested  in  the  progress  of  the  poison  that  was 
spreading  through  his  veins  and  arteries,  and  calling 
for  his  thermometer,  he  calmly  took  his  own  tempera- 
ture and  with  fevered  fingers  took  his  racing  pulse  and 
noted  both  on  a  pad,  together  with  comments  on  his 
feelings.  When  he  grew  too  weak  to  take  his  own  pulse 
and  temperature  he  had  the  attending  physician  do  it 
for  him  and  take  down  his  statements  as  to  his  feelings, 
such  as,  "Feel  that  I  am  going  pretty  fast,  rising  tem- 
perature, mouth  dry,  constriction  of  muscles  of  throat, 
sight  seems  to  be  growing  dim,  fear  that  I  may  become 
delirious — not  suffering  a  great  deal  of  pain."  With 
trembling  hand  he  would  sign  the  record  and  then  rest 
awhile,  then  call  for  a  stimulant,  and  again  insist  that 
a  record  be  made  of  the  progress  of  the  malady.  With- 
out a  murmur  of  complaint,  his  failing  powers  and 


212  WHEN  KANSAS  WAS  YOUNG 

faculties  centered  on  the  one  desire  to  make  a  record 
of  the  experience  of  a  dying  man,  he  held  to  his  purpose 
until  his  voice  failed,  the  pencil  fell  from  his  nerveless 
fingers,  and  Meinke  was  dead.  So  far  as  I  know,  this 
remarkable  record  was  not  preserved.  Quite  possibly 
it  would  be  of  no  particular  benefit  to  science  if  it  were, 
but  it  always  struck  me  as  a  unique,  courageous,  and 
rather  pleasant  way  to  die. 

The  experience  of  Doctor  Dunn  was  different  but 
almost  as  interesting.  At  that  time  stockmen  were 
troubled  a  great  deal  with  the  loco  weed.  This  weed, 
whose  botanical  name  I  believe  is  "Astragalus  hornii," 
grows  abundantly  on  some  of  the  ranges  in  southwest 
Kansas.  Both  cattle  and  horses  learn  to  like  it  and 
when  once  addicted  to  the  loco  habit  it  is  almost  as 
difficult  to  cure  them  as  it  is  to  wean  the  confirmed 
opium  eater  from  his  drug.  The  effect  of  the  weed 
on  the  animal  is  peculiar.  It  seems  to  produce  a  kind 
of  insanity.  A  locoed  horse  becomes  entirely  un- 
manageable. A  cow  or  steer  which  gets  to  be  a  con- 
firmed loco  eater  loses  its  appetite  for  nourishing  food ; 
its  hair  becomes  rough  and  the  eye  has  the  wild  look 
of  dementia.  Under  the  influence  of  the  weed  the 
animal  seems  to  lose  all  sense  of  proportion.  It  will 
imagine  that  a  rope  lying  on  the  ground  or  a  small 
stick  is  a  huge  log  and  will  at  first  refuse  to  cross  it, 
but  if  forced  to  do  so  will  vault  high  in  the  air.  While 
cattle  may  not  die  as  a  result  of  eating  the  weed,  they 
will  not  thrive  and  for  practical  purposes  might  as 
well  be  dead. 

Dr.  Dunn  became  greatly  interested  in  this  weed  and 
decided  to  make  some  experiments.  He  procured  a 
number  of  the  plants  and  boiled  them  until  he  had  ex- 
tracted the  juices  which  formed  a  sort  of  thick  liquor, 
of  about  the  consistency  of  Orleans  molasses.  The 
doctor,  it  must  be  said,  had  his  nerve  with  him.  He  did 


STRIKING  PERSONALITIES  213 

not  experiment  on  his  mother-in-law  or  his  wife  or  his 
dog,  but  drank  the  decoction  himself.  I  was  much  in- 
terested in  the  results  and  regret  that  I  did  not  at  the 
time  make  a  careful  record  of  them.  He  told  me  that 
at  first  it  did  not  seem  to  have  much  if  any  effect,  but 
after  a  time  he  began  to  have  peculiar  sensations.  The 
first  sensation,  as  I  now  recall,  was  a  burning  in  his 
stomach  and  a  racking  headache.  Then  things  began 
to  look  queer  to  him.  He  said  that  he  could  understand 
the  feeling  of  a  locoed  horse.  He  lost  the  sense  of 
proportion.  The  gypsum  hills  began  to  look  like  lofty 
mountains  and  an  ordinary  cow  pony  looked  larger 
than  an  Asiatic  elephant.  Everything  had  a  distorted, 
unreal  appearance  and  he  felt  that  he  must  hold  his 
grip  on  himself  or  go  mad.  After  a  time  the  feeling 
began  to  wear  off  and  he  felt  a  reaction  and  great 
weakness.  After  a  few  hours  all  bad  effects  seemed  to 
have  disappeared  and  he  returned  to  his  normal  con- 
dition. Just  what  he  had  in  mind  in  making  this  rash 
experiment  I  do  not  know,  unless  he  hoped  to  discover 
some  antidote  for  the  weed.  I  never  heard  that  he  did 
this,  or  even  that  he  carried  his  experiments  any 
further. 

"I  can't  say,"  he  remarked  to  me  privately,  "that  I 
would  care  to  experiment  any  more,  but  I  have  dis- 
covered one  compensation  that  might  come  from  being 
locoed.  You  know  that  there  isn't  much  practice 
around  here  for  a  doctor  and  the  fees  are  light  and  not 
many  of  them.  Well  while  I  was  under  the  influence  of 
the  loco  syrup  I  took  out  a  dollar  bill  and  bless  me  if 
it  didn't  look  like  twenty  dollars.  My  philosophy  is 
that  it  is  not  so  much  what  you  have  as  what  you  think 
you  have  that  counts,  and  if  I  could  multiply  my  in- 
come by  ten,  in  my  mind,  by  eating  loco  it  might  be 
worth  while." 


214  WHEN  KANSAS  WAS  YOUNG 

Carrie  Nation 

It  was  in  the  later  eighties  when  the  Rev.  David 
Nation  came  to  Medicine  Lodge  as  pastor  of  the  Chris- 
tian church  in  the  little  western  town.  I  may  say, 
advisedly,  that  David  accompanied  his  wife,  Carrie,  for 
at  no  time  during  their  matrimonial  career  did  David 
attain  to  a  higher  rank  than  second  lieutenant  in  that 
household.  Carrie,  whatever  her  virtues  and  whatever 
her  faults,  and  she  had  both  in  a  marked  degree,  was 
always  militant,  always  dominant,  always  in  evidence. 
If  she  was  not  placed  at  the  head  of  whatever  proces- 
sion she  happened  to  be  in,  she  organized  another 
procession.  I  have  often  watched  her  and  David  with 
interest  on  their  way  to  church,  Carrie  marching  like 
a  drum  major  some  feet  in  advance,  David  bringing  up 
the  rear  a  trifle  humped  of  shoulder  and  perhaps  a  bit 
uncertain  of  step.  "Onward,  Christian  Soldiers"  ap- 
pealed to  her  martial  nature.  Her  not  unshapely  nose 
tilted  at  a  belligerent  angle  and  when  she  was  engaged, 
figuratively  or  actually,  in  storming  the  battlements  of 
sin  as  she  understood  them,  her  eyes  lit  up  with  the  j  oy 
of  battle  and  her  cheeks  flamed  with  the  excitement  of 
conflict.  She  was  possessed  of  the  courage  of  a 
crusader  and  the  zeal  of  a  bigot,  with  a  frankness  that 
was  delightful  when  it  was  not  embarrassing. 

When  her  husband,  David,  took  his  place  in  the 
pulpit,  Carrie  occupied  a  pew  well  to  the  front  and 
entered  into  the  devotions  with  a  whole-hearted  earnest- 
ness that  imparted  itself  to  the  rest  of  the  congrega- 
tion. In  the  singing  her  voice  rose  above  all  the  others 
in  vibrant  and  triumphant  peans  of  thanksgiving  and 
praise,  for  with  Carrie  Nation  religion  was  no  mere 
matter  of  form.  Others  might  have  doubts;  she  had 
none.  Prayer  might  be  with  other  professors  of  re- 
ligion largely  lip  service,  but  with  her  it  was  direct 


STRIKING  PERSONALITIES  215 

communication  with  the  Most  High  and  she  was  as 
certain  as  the  Hebrew  prophets  that  she  received  direct 
revelations  and  direction  from  Jehovah  on  His  throne. 
Withal,  however,  she  was  rather  practical  in  her  re- 
ligion. She  wearied  of  droning  commonplaces  and 
longed  for  the  stirring  call  of  the  bugle  and  the  gleam- 
ing banners  of  the  army  of  the  Lord.  When  David's 
sermons  grew  prosy,  which  was  not  unusual,  Carrie 
would  listen  for  a  few  minutes  in  impatience  and  then 
announce  in  a  voice  of  finality  and  authority,  "That 
is  enough  for  to-day,  David,"  and  it  was,  for  David  at 
least  had  the  wisdom  to  know  where  he  should  get  off, 
when  it  was  pointed  out  to  him  in  that  way. 

To  those  who  did  not  know  her  well,  Carrie  seemed 
astonishingly  abrupt  at  times.  Once  the  late  Al  Green, 
formerly  well  known  newspaper  writer  and  for  many 
years  traveling  correspondent  for  the  Kansas  City 
Journal,  visited  Medicine  Lodge  for  the  express  pur- 
pose of  seeing  and  interviewing  Carrie  Nation.  She 
did  not  know  he  was  coming  and  had  never  seen  him. 
He  was  directed  to  her  residence  and  found  her  stand- 
ing at  the  gate.  He  introduced  himself  saying,  "My 
name  is  Green."  Carrie  did  not  ask  what  his  business 
was  or  why  he  wanted  to  see  her,  but  as  her  first  salu- 
tation asked:  "Are  you  a  Christian ?"  The  suddenness 
and  unexpectedness  of  it  rather  knocked  him.  off  his 
mental  balance,  but  he  landed  on  his  feet  and  replied: 
"For  the  purpose  of  this  occasion  Mrs.  Nation  we  will 
assume  that  I  am." 

The  whisky  joint  was  her  special  aversion  and  long 
before  she  became  famous  she  was  a  thorn  in  the  flesh 
of  the  officers  who  failed  to  do  their  duty  under  the 
law  and  fearlessly  tackled  the  joint  keepers  themselves 
when  she  had  the  opportunity.  Joints  flourished  to 
some  extent  in  the  town  of  Medicine  Lodge,  but  in  the 
border  town  of  Kiowa,  they  were  openly  encouraged 


216  WHEN  KANSAS  WAS  YOUNG 

and  protected  by  the  city  authorities  and  apparently 
regarded  with  approval  by  a  majority  of  the  citizens. 
Carrie  Nation  declared  that  the  Lord  appeared  to  her 
in  a  dream  or  vision  and  told  her  that  it  was  her  duty 
to  go  to  Kiowa  and  break  up  these  dens  of  iniquity. 
So  Carrie  went. 

Apparently,  the  Lord  had  not  suggested  the  utility 
of  the  hatchet  at  that  time,  as  Carrie  went  to  Kiowa 
armed  as  David  when  he  went  forth  to  put  the  fixings 
on  the  giant,  Goliath,  except  that  Carrie  had  no  sling. 
She  had,  however,  an  apronful  of  stones  of  convenient 
size  and  roughness,  and  with  these  she  marched  into  the 
leading  booze  dispensary  and  immediately  went  into 
action.  Probably  her  aim  was  not  very  accurate,  for 
she  threw  overhand  and  wildly,  after  the  manner  of 
women,  but  then  the  bar  extended  from  one  end  of  the 
room  almost  to  the  other,  and  a  rock  heaved  in  that 
general  direction  was  bound  to  hit  something.  It  was 
immaterial  whether  it  struck  what  Carrie  aimed  at  or 
a  bottle  or  mirror  at  the  other  end  of  the  building,  the 
wreck  and  destruction  was  just  as  great.  The  city 
marshal  ran  in  to  quell  the  disturbance,  and  what 
Carrie  said  to  him  was  indeed  a  plenty,  for  with  her 
other  gifts  and  accomplishments  she  had  an  extensive 
and  virile  vocabulary.  She  was  not  arrested  for  this 
first  raid,  as  I  recall,  and  her  purpose  was  strengthened 
to  go  forth  alone,  if  need  be,  to  storm  the  battlements 
of  sin. 

Whether  it  was  the  result  of  another  revelation  or 
the  suggestion  of  a  friend,  or  the  prompting  of  a 
practical  mind  I  do  not  know,  but  probably  it  occurred 
to  her  that  she  could  do  more  execution  with  a  hatchet 
than  with  stones,  and  furthermore  a  hatchet  would  be 
easier  to  conceal.  Her  next  raid  was  in  the  city  of 
Wichita,  where  there  were  gilded  saloons  in  those  days 
protected  by  the  police,  in  consideration  of  which  they 


STRIKING  PERSONALITIES  217 

contributed  a  good  many  thousand  dollars  every  month 
to  the  city  treasury.  Carrie  made  her  debut  as  a 
smasher  in  the  "Windy  City"  on  the  Arkansas,  by 
breaking  a  large  mirror  and  a  number  of  bottles  and 
other  glassware  in  the  largest  saloon.  She  was  ar- 
rested and  thrown  into  the  city  jail,  but  as  soon  as  she 
could  get  out  went  on  her  way  smashing  as  she  went. 
It  was  some  time  before  she  visited  Topeka  and 
wrecked  a  joint  there.  She  was  again  arrested  and 
thrown  into  jail,  but  her  work  was  having  an  effect  on 
the  public  mind. 

It  so  happened  that  at  one  time  Carrie  Nation  and 
a  little  woman  by  the  name  of  Blanche  Boise  were  both 
in  jail  charged  with  disturbing  the  peace  because  they 
had  broken  windows  and  otherwise  damaged  places 
where  booze  was  unlawfully  sold,  while  joint  keepers 
were  plying  their  unlawful  business  unmolested  by  the 
officers  of  the  law.  There  is  a  certain  love  of  fair  play 
in  the  mind  of  the  average  American,  and  this  revolted 
at  the  transparent  injustice  of  punishing  a  couple  of 
weak  women,  while  joint  keepers  were  permitted  to  sell 
their  poison  contrary  to  law  and  go  unmolested. 

I  have  often  heard  it  said  that  Carrie  Nation  was 
simply  a  seeker  after  notoriety.  I  want  to  say  that  the 
charge  was  not  true.  It  is  quite  possible  that  after  her 
fame  became  world-wide  and  the  name  of  Carrie  Nation 
was  known  all  'round  the  globe,  she  grew  to  enjoy  the 
limelight  and  publicity,  but  from  the  very  beginning 
she  was  actuated  by  an  honest  and  courageous  purpose. 
She  was  a  fanatic,  mistaken,  I  think,  in  her  methods  of 
operation,  but,  spurred  on  by  the  zeal  of  a  martyr,  she 
would  have  gone  smiling  to  the  stake  and  lifted  up  her 
voice  in  triumphant  song  as  she  stood  amid  the  flames. 

I  have  said  that  she  was  a  woman  of  pronounced 
faults  and  pronounced  virtues,  but  her  good  qualities 
far  outweighed  her  faults.  She  was  generous  to  a 


218  WHEN  KANSAS  WAS  YOUNG 

fault,  and  always  ready  to  help  the  needy  and  afflicted. 
She  would  have  smashed  a  joint  until  it  was  an  utter 
wreck,  but  if  the  next  day  she  had  found  the  joint 
keeper  in  want  or  sickness,  she  would  have  nursed  him 
back  to  health  and  given  of  her  substance  to  feed  him 
and  his  family.  How  much  Carrie  Nation  had  to  do 
with  stirring  up  the  prohibition  sentiment  in  the  coun- 
try, which  grew  in  volume,  until  it  swept  the  nation, 
cannot,  of  course,  be  determined,  but  that  her  unique 
methods  and  personality  and  her  indomitable  courage 
and  energy  had  an  effect  on  public  sentiment,  there  can 
be  no  question. 

The  Discomfited  Hypnotist 

Along  in  the  middle  eighties  Medicine  Lodge  grew 
ambitious  to  have  a  hotel  that  would  be  a  credit  to  the 
town.  The  railroad  was  building  in  and  the  expecta- 
tion was  that  there  would  be  a  boom.  A  stock  com- 
pany was  organized  and  a  three-story  brick  hotel  was 
erected  that  was  regarded  with  pride  by  the  inhabit- 
ants. Among  the  landlords  that  ran  the  hotel  during 
the  next  few  years  was  one  Mortimer  Strong,  commonly 
known  as  Mort  Strong.  Mort's  idea  about  running  a 
hotel  was  not  to  let  the  guest  take  any  more  money 
away  than  could  be  helped.  If  he  had  more  mazuma 
than  was  necessary  to  pay  for  his  food  and  lodging,  if 
he  had  any  sporting  tendency,  and  most  travelers  in 
that  part  of  Kansas  at  that  time  did  have  more  or  less 
sporting  tendencies,  he  was  inveigled  into  a  game  of 
draw  poker,  and  as  the  game  was  put  up  against  him, 
his  skin  was  removed  with  deftness,  but  not  necessarily 
with  dispatch.  It  was  not  always  to  the  interest  of 
the  hotel  to  separate  the  guest  from  his  coin  at  the 
first  sitting.  That  sort  of  abrupt  procedure  was  liable 
to  discourage  the  guest  and  arouse  suspicions  in  his 


STRIKING  PERSONALITIES  219 

mind ;  besides,  if  the  sessions  about  the  card  table  could 
be  prolonged  for  two  or  three  evenings,  the  hotel  bill 
increased  in  proportion.  Mort  was  not  the  kind  of  a 
person  to  conceal  from  his  right  hand  what  his  left 
hand  was  doing.  Suffice  it  to  say  that  the  stranger 
within  the  gates  who  stopped  at  the  Grand  Hotel  rarely 
got  away  until  he  had  been  skinned  in  a  workmanlike 
and  thorough  manner. 

Mort  Strong  was  a  versatile  soul  who  enjoyed  a 
practical  joke  almost  as  well  as  he  enjoyed  putting 
up  a  hand  in  a  poker  game.  I  might  say  here  that 
Mortimer  also  ran  a  hotel  in  Medicine  before  the  Grand 
was  built.  I  am  not  entirely  positive  whether  the  in- 
cident about  to  be  related  occurred  in  the  old  hotel  or 
the  new,  but  think  it  was  in  the  new.  The  Kansas  City 
Star  at  that  time  had  a  descendant  of  Abraham  as  its 
subscription  solicitor  in  southwest  Kansas  and  in  the 
course  of  his  travels  the  young  Jew  landed  at  Medicine 
Lodge. 

He  was  unfamiliar  with  the  ways  of  the  border  and 
full  of  conversation.  It  was  not  long  until  Mort 
Strong  and  the  loafers  who  congregated  about  the  hotel 
discovered  that  here  was  a  most  promising  subject  for 
contribution  to  their  joy  of  life.  He  happened  to 
remark  that  he  was  interested  in  the  subject  of  hypno- 
tism and  had  studied  and  practiced  it  to  a  considerable 
extent.  Immediately  the  crowd  was  interested.  Some 
of  them  scoffed  at  the  possibility  that  the  Star  repre- 
sentative was  able  to  hypnotize  anybody,  but  others 
warmly  championed  him.  The  controversy  even  grew 
personal  and  bitter,  but  it  was  finally  proposed  to  settle 
the  question  by  having  the  Israelite  try  his  powers  on 
a  subject.  He  was  willing,  but  said  of  course  he  wasn't 
a  regular  professional  and  maybe  couldn't  put  the 
subject  under  the  influence  of  the  hypnotic  spell,  but  he 
was  willing  to  try.  The  subject  was  found  in  the  son 


220  WHEN  KANSAS  WAS  YOUNG 

of  the  hotel  keeper,  Mort  Strong.  Frank  Strong  was 
a  man  grown,  a  large  stalwart  man.  He  expressed 
doubt  about  the  ability  of  any  Jew  to  put  him  to  sleep 
but  was  willing  to  let  him  try. 

Before  the  experiment  commenced  young  Strong  put 
something  in  his  mouth  which  when  chewed  gently  and 
mingled  with  saliva  would  create  a  sort  of  lather.  The 
Jew  commenced  to  make  passes  at  young  Strong  and 
talk  to  him  in  a  commanding  and  at  the  same  time 
soothing  tone  of  voice:  "You  vas  goin'  to  schleep  now. 
Go  to  schleep.  Go  to  schleep!" 

The  effect  was  satisfactory  beyond  the  hypnotist's 
most  sanguine  expectations.  Young  Strong's  eyes 
closed.  He  fell  back  on  the  couch  and  seemed  to  be 
wrapped  in  profound  slumber.  The  Jew  was  delighted. 
"You  see,  gentlemens,  he  vas  schleepin'  shust  like  a 
leedle  babe,"  he  said.  Just  then  something  happened 
that  he  had  not  counted  on.  Young  Strong  began  to 
foam  at  the  mouth.  The  elder  Strong  at  once  became 
apprehensive.  "What's  the  matter  with  him,  young 
feller?"  he  yelled  at  the  frightened  Jew.  "Get  him 
from  under  this  hypnotic  spell  of  yours  and  get  him 
out  of  it  d — n  quick  or  there  will  be  something  doing, 
believe  me." 

The  Jew  began  frantically  to  make  passes  at  the 
apparently  unconscious  man  and  call  on  him  to  "vake 
up,"  but  the  more  he  worked  the  more  young  Strong 
foamed  at  the  mouth.  The  fury  of  Mort  Strong  grew 
apace.  He  was  restrained  from  making  a  bodily  attack 
on  the  amateur  hypnotist  only  by  the  combined  effort 
of  several  of  the  loafers,  who  begged  of  him  not  to  kill 
the  Jew  because  nobody  else  around  there  would  have 
any  idea  how  the  young  man  could  be  brought  out  of 
the  trance.  Meantime  the  consternation  of  the  Jew 
increased.  Great  drops  of  sweat  stood  out  on  his  fore- 
head, as  he  called  pleadingly  but  with  no  effect  for 


STRIKING  PERSONALITIES  221 

young  Strong  to  "vake  up."  Apparently  the  condition 
of  the  sleeping  man  was  growing  worse.  His  breathing 
became  labored  and  the  foam  from  his  mouth  flecked  his 
lips  and  ran  from  the  corners  of  his  mouth. 

It  was  well  along  in  the  evening,  near  bed  time  when 
the  experiment  was  undertaken;  by  midnight  the  ex- 
citement had  reached  fever  heat.  Mort  Strong  was 
heaping  imprecations  on  the  young  Israelite  and  de- 
claring that  unless  his  boy  was  brought  out  of  the 
trance  he  would  kill  the  man  who  had  put  him  under 
the  spell.  Finally  he  declared  that  he  wouldn't  stand 
it  any  longer  and  swearing  vengeance  rushed  out  of  the 
room. 

"Mort  has  gone  for  his  gun !"  one  of  the  loafers,  who 
had  exerted  himself  to  save  the  Jew  from  assault  at  the 
hands  of  the  grief-crazed  father,  whispered  to  the  Jew. 
"If  you  are  here  when  he  comes  back  I  can't  save  you. 
You  had  better  make  your  getaway  now.  Head  south 
for  Kiowa.  I  will  try  to  keep  him  from  following  you. 
There  is  a  train  leaves  Kiowa  early  in  the  morning. 
It's  not  quite  twenty  miles  from  here.  If  you  hit  the 
grit  fast  enough  you  ought  to  be  able  to  make  it  before 
that  train  pulls  out." 

It  seemed  to  the  Jew  to  be  good  advice.  He  grabbed 
his  hat  and  coat  and  faded  rapidly  into  the  night  head- 
ing for  Kiowa  twenty  miles  away.  It  was  a  sore-footed 
and  wearied  man  who  limped  into  the  Kiowa  depot  at 
an  early  hour  the  next  morning,  but  he  was  reasonably 
happy,  for  he  hadn't  been  followed  and  he  had  caught 
the  train. 

The  Story  of  a  Bank  Wrecker 

About  the  year  1868  or  1869  there  came  to  the  new 
state  of  Kansas  a  young  man  possessed,  according  to 
his  own  statement,  of  $4,000,  coupled  with  marvelous 


222  WHEN  KANSAS  WAS  YOUNG 

nerve,  unbounded  ambition,  and  unhandicapped  in  his 
dreams  of  exploitation  by  scruples  suggested  by  a 
tender  conscience.  J.  S.  Danford,  the  young  man  in 
question,  located  in  the  new  town  of  El  Dorado,  and 
founded  the  Walnut  Valley  Times,  taking  in  Col.  Bent 
Murdock  as  a  partner  and  afterward  selling  out  his 
interest  to  the  latter. 

The  banking  business  offered  a  more  inviting  field 
for  a  man  of  the  tastes  and  ambitious  of  Danford  than 
a  newspaper  in  a  small  town,  so  he  blossomed  out  as  a 
banker.  Fortune  smiled  on  him.  His  bank  paid  enor- 
mous dividends.  He  was  a  man  of  pleasing  address, 
pleasing  manners,  and  constantly  increasing  popular- 
ity. He  took  a  hand  in  politics  and  was  the  valued 
adviser  of  senatorial  candidates.  At  one  time  he  en- 
joyed the  reputation  of  being  the  most  popular  banker 
in  the  state.  From  El  Dorado  he  moved  to  Osage  City, 
then  enjoying  a  boom  on  account  of  the  discovery  of 
coal.  Senator  Plumb  was  one  of  the  principal  stock- 
holders in  the  new  venture,  and  men  of  lesser  note  were 
glad  to  hold  blocks  of  the  bank's  capitalization.  The 
game  seemed  easy  and  Danford  began  to  establish 
banks  at  various  points.  Carbondale  was  a  small  side 
issue.  Larger  banks  were  established  at  the  border 
towns  of  Caldwell,  Hunnewell,  and  Arkansas  City. 
With  accumulating  prosperity,  acquaintance,  and 
power,  Danford  became  a  lavish  spender.  Wine, 
women,  and  song  called  for  extensive  expenditures  and 
the  stock  market  made  drains  on  his  revenues. 

It  was  about  1880,  or  1881  that  his  banks  began  to 
get  in  bad  repute.  At  that  time  there  was  no  state 
banking  department  and  the  bank  wrecker  had  easy 
sailing.  Still  Danford  was  not  ready  to  scuttle  and 
leave.  He  was  trying,  like  the  skillful  vaudeville  artist 
who  keeps  a  half  dozen  balls  in  the  air  at  the  same  time, 
to  keep  his  several  banks  running  until  he  could  unload 


STRIKING  PERSONALITIES  223 

them  on  somebody  else,  as  he  had  done  in  some  cases 
already,  or,  failing  in  that,  get  the  assets  in  shape  so 
that  he  could  realize  on  them  and  make  his  getaway 
in  safety. 

He  gathered  up  a  bunch  of  his  best  appearing  securi- 
ties and  went  to  St.  Louis,  with  the  intention  of  se- 
curing a  loan  of  currency  to  tide  him  over,  but  failed 
and  decided  that  there  must  be  a  receivership.  On  his 
way  home  he  secured  the  services  of  Captain  Joe 
Waters,  still  a  leading  attorney,  orator,  and  poet  at  the 
ripe  age  of  eighty-three,  John  Martin,  afterward 
United  States  senator,  now  dead,  and  Ellis  Lewis,  lead- 
ing attorney  of  Osage  City.  In  a  conference  which 
lasted  until  midnight  it  was  agreed  that  Major  Calvin 
Hood,  of  Emporia,  should  be  selected  as  receiver  and 
that  Captain  Waters  should  go  with  Danford  to  Osage 
City,  Carbondale,  and  on  to  Wellington  for  the  purpose 
of  making  the  settlement. 

To  the  last  Danford  played  his  game  magnificently. 
He  was  no  piker.  He  hired  a  special  train  to  take  him 
and  his  attorneys  on  their  journey.  At  Wellington 
Danford  and  Captain  Waters  stopped  at  the  Phillips 
House,  the  best  hotel  in  the  town,  and  there  Captain 
Waters  confesses  that  he  began  to  realize  the  serious- 
ness of  the  situation  and  that  he  was  along  rather  as 
a  rear  guard  than  as  legal  advisor.  It  may  be  that 
Danford  himself  did  not  realize  until  he  got  there,  just 
what  he  had  to  face.  So  far  his  luck  had  never  for- 
saken him.  He  had  always  been  able  to  make  men  be- 
lieve in  him.  He  was  a  born  confidence  man,  and  artist 
of  superior  ability.  He,  too,  had  plenty  of  sporting 
blood  in  his  veins.  It  may  be  that  even  if  he  had  known 
that  the  rough,  weatherbeaten  men  of  the  cattle  ranges 
who  had  deposited  in  his  banks,  were  ready  now  to  mob 
him,  he  would  still  have  dared  to  face  them  and  take 
the  chance  of  mastering  them  by  his  cool  assurance 


224  WHEN  KANSAS  WAS  YOUNG 

and  plausible  promises.  At  any  rate,  once  in  the 
danger  zone  he  displayed  a  coolness  probably  never 
excelled  and  which  excited  a  degree  of  admiration  even 
among  the  men  who  had  gathered  to  hang  him.  Captain 
Waters,  although  there  was  no  reason  why  the  deposi- 
tors should  desire  his  execution,  confesses  that  he  was 
filled  with  greater  fear  and  trepidation  than  Danford 
displayed  even  when  death  seemed  to  be  staring  him 
in  the  face  and  his  earthly  pilgrimage  apparently 
limited  to  a  few  brief  and  fleeting  minutes. 

The  cowboys  whose  money  had  gone  into  the  Cald- 
well  "Drovers  Bank"  were  gathering  at  the  Phillips 
House  in  increasing  numbers.  The  guns  they  were 
carrying  were  in  evidence  on  every  hip,  but  as  Captain 
Waters  says,  the  most  ominous  thing  was  the  number 
of  long,  supple  lariats  the  men  were  carrying,  when 
there  was  not  a  steer  to  be  roped  within  twenty  miles. 
These  men  from  the  range  found  Danford  and  inter- 
viewed him.  They  were  hot,  angry,  threatening.  Dan- 
ford  was  cool  as  an  Arctic  icicle.  One  cowboy  com- 
plained that  he  had  lost  all  his  hard-earned  wages  in 
the  bank,  $1,800  in  all.  Danford  coolly  tossed  him  a 
$20  gold  piece,  with  the  remark  that  that  would  supply 
his  immediate  wants.  The  depositors  from  the  range 
demanded  that  Danford  go  to  Caldwell  and  settle  up 
with  them,  and  although  he  must  have  known  that  it 
was  like  placing  his  head  in  the  lion's  mouth  or  his  neck 
in  the  lariat  noose,  Danford  agreed  to  go.  They  pro- 
posed to  haul  him  from  Wellington  to  Caldwell  in  a 
wagon,  but  with  magnificent  nerve  he  proposed  to 
charter  a  train  and  take  all  of  the  party  down  at  his 
expense,  and  in  this  state  he  rode  into  the  border  town. 

Along  with  him  went  two  more  of  his  attorneys, 
Judge  Campbell,  of  Wichita,  known  in  those  days  as 
"Tiger  Bill,"  and  J.  W.  Haughey.  The  presence  of 
the  lawyers  seemed  to  irk  the  crowd  of  men,  who  were 


STRIKING  PERSONALITIES  225 

bent  on  either  getting  their  money  or  hanging  Danf  ord. 
The  lawyers  might,  in  some  way,  interfere  with  the 
proceedings.  They  were  told  that  the  space  of  ten 
minutes  would  be  given  them  to  get  out  of  town  and 
that  there  was  a  freight  going  north  within  that  time. 

"You  are  prodigal  of  time,  gentlemen,"  said  "Tiger 
Bill,"  "unless  my  estimate  of  the  distance  to  the  depot 
is  at  fault.  I  will  return  to  you  five  of  the  golden 
minutes  you  have  so  generously  donated  in  which  to 
make  our  exodus." 

Danford,  the  bank  wrecker,  faced  the  mob  without 
legal  counsel,  but  with  magnificent  courage.  Looking 
the  leaders  of  the  angry  mob  square  in  their  eyes,  he 
told  them,  with  as  much  apparent  confidence  as  if  he 
had  been  telling  the  truth. 

"Gentlemen,  I  have  plenty  of  assets  to  pay  every 
dollar  of  my  indebtedness.  If  the  assets  of  these  banks 
are  insufficient,  I  shall  have  recourse  to  my  private  for- 
tune to  pay  you  in  full.  If  that  is  insufficient,  I  will  give 
my  body  to  be  divided  between  you  to  square  the  debt." 

At  this  point  a  lean-visaged  and  squeaky-voiced  man 
from  the  range,  who  was  standing  well  back  in  the 
crowd,  piped  up  eagerly:  "I  speak  for  a  part  of  his 

gall." 

But  for  once  his  assurance  had  failed.  He  had  not 
satisfied  the  crowd,  which  seemed  to  be  growing  rather 
more  clamorous  for  his  life.  Yet  his  self-possession 
did  not  forsake  him  for  a  moment.  A  local  preacher 
came  forward  and  offered  to  pray  for  the  man  he  sup- 
posed was  doomed  to  die,  but  Danford  would  have  none 
of  it.  "If  you  can  make  a  prayer  that  will  influence 
that  mob  not  to  hang  me,  make  it  damned  quick,  but 
otherwise  don't  waste  your  prayer.  If  I  am  to  hang, 
I  will  settle  with  the  Almighty  my  own  way." 

Danford  stepped  back  into  the  bank  and  then  there 
came  to  his  rescue  his  wife,  a  woman  of  queenly  pres- 


226  WHEN  KANSAS  WAS  YOUNG 

ence  and  remarkable  ability.  As  cool  as  her  husband, 
she  saved  the  life  of  the  man  who  did  not  deserve  her 
love  or  confidence.  Standing  quietly  before  the  an- 
gered crowd,  she  immediately  picked  the  leader  and 
addressed  herself  to  him. 

"You  are  a  brave  man  and  a  man  of  sense,"  she  said, 
"otherwise  you  would  not  be  a  leader  of  men." 

It  was  a  center  shot.  It  appealed  strongly  to  the 
vanity  of  the  leader  in  the  only  way  he  could  have  been 
appealed  to.  If  she  had  called  him  a  good  man  or  even 
an  honest  man,  it  would  not  have  touched  him,  but  to 
be  called  a  leader  of  men — that  was  the  highest  compli- 
ment that  could  be  paid  to  a  man  of  the  range.  She 
continued : 

"What  good  will  it  do  you  to  hang  my  husband? 
If  you  let  him  live  he  will  pay  you,  but  if  you  hang 
him  you  make  me  a  widow,  but  get  nothing  for  your- 
selves." 

The  leader  hesitated  and  she  knew  she  had  won,  and 
her  husband  would  not  die  that  night. 

"Let  me  go  in  and  talk  with  him,  boys,"  said  the 
leader.  "Maybe  we  can  make  him  dig  up  the  money, 
and  that  is  all  we  want." 

He  went  into  the  bank.  Danford  was  smoking  as 
coolly  as  if  the  mob  outside  was  a  pleasant  serenading 
party  instead  of  men  bent  on  taking  his  life. 

"What  have  you  to  offer,  Danford?"  asked  the 
leader.  "The  boys  are  getting  a  trifle  impatient." 

"So  I  perceive,"  said  Danford,  as  he  blew  a  ring  of 
smoke  in  the  air.  "Well,  here  is  a  list  of  my  assets.  I 
will  collect  them  and  turn  them  over  to  you,  but  if  you 
hang  me  you  won't  get  a  damned  cent." 

Nerve  and  a  woman's  tact  and  judgment  of  men  had 
won.  The  mob,  at  the  suggestion  of  the  leader,  dis- 
persed. Danford  went  on  his  way  a  free  man — and 
the  depositors  lost  their  money. 


STRIKING  PERSONALITIES  227 

I  am  indebted  to  Captain  Waters,  Danford's  attor- 
ney, for  the  following  summing  up  of  his  subsequent 
career  and  character: 

"His  career  since  then  has  been  a  pilgrimage  of  bank 
looting  in  Chicago,  Kentucky,  Oregon,  and  other  precincts 
not  heard  from.  He  was  a  born  Apache.  His  methods 
were  his  own.  He  took  no  one  into  his  confidence.  If 
living,  he  still  practices  his  unconquered  bluff,  and  if  dead, 
the  celestial  bank  examiner  will  need  to  be  on  the  eternal 
watch  to  prevent  him  from  escaping  from  hell,  climbing 
up  to  heaven  the  back  way,  and  inducing  the  saints  in  the 
choir  to  exchange  their  golden  crowns  for  stock  which  he 
would  propose  to  organize  in  the  New  Jerusalem. 

"He  only  lacked  a  biographer  to  make  him  a  classic.  He 
convulsed  the  state  for  a  while  and  rose  to  a  prominent 
place  in  the  ranks  of  frenzied  finance ;  yet,  it  is  remarkable, 
after  the  lapse  of  only  thirty-nine  years,  how  few  recol- 
lect the  incidents  of  his  magnificent  rise  or  the  marvelous 
nerve  of  his  spectacular  fall." 


Demiis  T.  Flywn 

About  the  middle  of  June,  1884,  a  young  Irishman 
who  had  been  an  office  boy  in  the  law  office  of  Grover 
Cleveland,  in  Buffalo,  and  while  there  had  picked  up 
some  knowledge  of  law,  and  who  had  somewhere  learned 
something  of  the  printers'  trade,  landed  in  Barber 
County,  bringing  with  him  a  Washington  hand  press 
and  a  few  fonts  of  type.  It  was  Dennis  T.  Flynn, 
breezy  and  self-confident  and  acting  on  the  principle 
that  the  world  was  his  oyster  and  all  that  was  necessary 
for  him  to  do  was  to  open  it. 

The  Santa  Fe  was  getting  ready  to  extend  its  lines 
into  the  Panhandle  of  Texas,  but  there  was  reason  to 
believe  that  the  extension  would  be  halted  at  the  state 
line,  where  a  town  would  be  built  to  accommodate  the 


228  WHEN  KANSAS  WAS  YOUNG 

cattle  men  who  ranged  their  herds  on  the  Cherokee 
strip  and  the  lands  to  the  south.  Back  in  the  early 
seventies  a  little  trading  post  had  been  established  some 
eighteen  miles  south  of  Medicine  Lodge  and  about 
three  miles  from  the  state  line,  named  Kiowa.  In  the 
year  1884  it  was  no  larger  than  ten  years  before. 
There  were  a  few  log  and  cottonwood  shanties,  one  of 
them  occupied  as  a  general  supply  store.  There  was 
also  a  drug  store,  with  all  that  that  implied  in  south- 
west Kansas  and  a  rambling  log  building  used  as  a 
hotel.  The  proprietress  of  this  hostelry  was  Mrs.  Ada 
Chatham,  who  had  married  a  brilliant  but  dissipated 
newspaper  writer,  Jim  Chatham,  who  neglected  and 
finally  compelled  his  wife  to  shift  for  herself  and  child. 
It  may  be  said  to  her  credit  that  she  not  only  made  a 
success  financially  of  the  hotel  business  in  the  little 
frontier  hamlet,  but  retained  the  respect  of  every 
cowboy  and  cattleman  who  patronized  the  log  hotel. 
Her  customers  came  from  all  over  the  range  from  the 
Arkansas  River  on  the  north  to  the  Red  River  on  the 
south,  rough,  bronzed  men,  but  men  who  had  a  chival- 
rous regard  for  a  woman  who  was  possessed  of  virtue 
and  tact,  and  Mrs.  Chatham  was  endowed  with  both. 

When  Dennis  Flynn  landed  in  old  Kiowa  the  only 
place  available  for  a  newspaper  office  and  printshop 
was  a  cottonwood  shanty.  One  needs  to  have  seen  a 
cottonwood  shanty  that  had  stood  the  strenuous  Kan- 
sas weather  for  six  or  seven  or  maybe  ten  years,  to 
appreciate  what  this  building  was  like.  It  used  to  be 
told  of  a  Medicine  Lodge  carpenter  who  was  a  man  of 
great  deliberation,  that  on  one  occasion  he  got  hold 
of  a  cottonwood  plank  to  be  used  for  flooring,  and 
while  he  was  considering  how  he  would  put  it  down  the 
board  warped  round  him  and  held  him  fast  until  an- 
other carpenter  came  to  his  rescue  and  sawed  him  out. 
It  was  also  claimed  that  when  a  corpse  was  laid  on  a 


STRIKING  PERSONALITIES  229 

green  cottonwood  plank  and  placed  tenderly  out  in  the 
Kansas  sunlight,  in  two  hours  the  plank  would  wrap 
itself  round  the  body  of  the  dead  and  serve  the  double 
purpose  of  a  coffin  and  a  winding  sheet. 

The  building  in  which  Dennis  Flynn  set  up  his  print- 
shop  had  been,  as  I  have  said,  exposed  to  the  weather 
for  several  years.  The  door  had  warped  itself  loose 
from  the  hinges,  the  window  casing  had  warped  away 
from  the  sash,  and  the  weather  boarding  had  pulled 
the  nails  that  fastened  it  to  the  studding.  It  was  neces- 
sary occasionally  for  the  editor  and  compositor  to  lay 
down  his  rule  and  shoo  the  cows  out  of  the  shop  when 
they  wandered  in,  impelled  by  bovine  curiosity.  The 
wind,  blowing  freely  through  the  cracks  between  the 
weather  boards,  mingled  sand,  dust,  tumble  weeds,  and 
prairie  fuel  with  the  type  in  the  cases,  and  caused  the 
editor  to  exclaim  in  bitterness  of  spirit  that  life  was 
just  one  damn  thing  after  another. 

On  June  26,  1884,  under  these  discouraging  condi- 
tions, the  future  congressman  got  out  the  first  issue  of 
the  Kiowa  Herald  and  announced  the  editorial  policy 
as  follows:  "The  Herald  chooses  to  be  recognized  as 
an  independent  paper  devoted  to  no  particular  political 
or  religious  party."  Three  weeks  afterward  the  Herald 
placed  the  names  of  Elaine  and  Logan  at  the  head  of 
its  editorial  column.  The  railroad  missed  the  old  town 
by  three  miles  and  the  town  of  New  Kiowa  was  born. 
The  Herald  was  moved  to  the  new  town  and  in  one  of 
the  first  issues  afterward  I  find  this  significant  local 
item:  "Mrs.  Ada  Chatham  has  opened  a  hotel.  It  is 
easy  to  guess  who  will  get  the  trade.'*  It  was  evident 
that  the  susceptible  heart  of  the  Irish  editor  was 
enmeshed  and  not  very  long  afterward  Mrs.  Ada 
Chatham  became  Mrs.  Dennis  T.  Flynn. 

Perhaps  it  is  not  out  of  place  here  to  leave  Dennis 
for  a  little  space  and  speak  of  a  matter  of  interest  in 


230  WHEN  KANSAS  WAS  YOUNG 

connection  with  the  widow  Chatham,  now  many  years 
Mrs.  Dennis  Flynn.  By  her  first  marriage  she  had  a 
daughter,  dark  eyed  and  black  haired  as  a  gypsy  maid. 
There  was  a  strain  of  Indian  blood  in  the  Chathams 
which  showed  in  little  Dorothy,  better  known  as  Dot. 
Years  later,  when  her  stepfather  became  distinguished, 
Dot  became  a  Washington  belle. 

In  1889  the  fortunes  of  Dennis  Flynn  had  fallen  to 
a  rather  low  ebb.  Investments  in  the  new  town  had  not 
proved  as  profitable  as  was  expected,  and  Dennis  was 
having  an  uphill  pull.  President  Harrison  had  issued 
his  proclamation  opening  old  Oklahoma  to  settlement 
and  fixing  the  day  for  the  opening.  It  was  known  that 
the  temporary  capital  of  the  new  territory  would  be 
located  at  Guthrie,  a  town  yet  to  be  built.  The  sug- 
gestion was  made  to  Dennis  Flynn  that  he  should  go 
to  Washington,  see  Congressman  Peters  of  the  Seventh 
Kansas  district  and  get  the  appointment  as  postmaster 
for  the  new  town.  He  fell  in  with  the  idea,  but  offered 
the  objection  that  it  was  a  long  way  to  walk  to  Wash- 
ington and  he  had  not  the  price  of  a  railroad  ticket. 
A  friend  offered  to  lend  him  the  money.  Dennis  went 
to  Washington,  came  back  with  the  appointment,  and 
went  to  Guthrie  at  the  opening  as  postmaster.  There 
was  no  building  and  no  facilities  for  handling  the  mail, 
which  poured  in  by  the  carload.  A  tent  was  erected, 
a  force  of  clerks  organized,  and  the  mail  was  sorted  on 
the  ground.  It  is  remarkable  that  this  community  of 
full  10,000  people,  brought  together  from  all  parts  of 
the  United  States,  made  up  of  all  nationalities  and 
speaking  all  kinds  of  languages,  was  so  efficiently 
served  that  there  was  almost  no  complaint  about  the 
postoffice.  That  was  the  beginning  of  the  career  of 
Dennis  Flynn  in  Oklahoma.  Two  years  afterward  he 
decided  that  he  would  like  to  be  a  delegate  to  Congress. 
He  was  still  poor  and  another  Kansas  friend  financed 


STRIKING  PERSONALITIES  231 

his  campaign.  The  loan  was  paid  back  in  monthly 
installments  out  of  his  salary  after  his  election. 

As  a  delegate  in  Congress,  Dennis  Flynn  attracted 
more  attention  and  wielded  more  influence  than  any 
other  delegate  in  that  body.  He  developed  a  taking 
style  of  speaking  that  went  especially  well  with  the 
settlers  in  the  new  territory.  When  the  Cherokee 
strip  was  opened,  the  land  had  to  be  paid  for  by  the 
settlers.  The  argument  for  this  was  that  the  Govern- 
ment had  to  buy  the  land  from  the  Indians.  Flynn 
introduced  and  had  passed  the  "Free  Homes"  bill, 
which  relieved  the  settlers  from  their  payments  and 
gave  them  their  homes  on  the  same  terms  as  home- 
steaders in  other  parts  of  the  United  States. 

With  the  bringing  in  of  the  state  of  Oklahoma,  in- 
cluding all  of  the  old  Indian  Territory,  the  state  became 
hopelessly  Democratic  and  Dennis  went  out  of  politics. 
But  he  had  developed  into  as  successful  a  business  man 
as  he  was  a  politician  and  to-day  he  is  rated  as  a 
millionaire.  Tempora  mutantur.  There  was  a  time 
when  I  paid  him  $5  for  an  advertisement  and  he 
acknowledged  to  me  that  the  coloring  and  designs  on 
that  bill  looked  far  more  beautiful  to  him  than  any  of 
the  paintings  by  the  old  masters. 


A  Populist  Judge 

When  the  Farmers'  Alliance  movement  swept  over 
Kansas  the  leaders  determined  that  it  was  necessary  to 
get  control  of  the  courts,  and  for  that  purpose  Alliance 
conventions  were  held  in  most  of  the  judicial  districts 
to  nominate  candidates.  The  convention  to  nominate 
a  candidate  for  judge  for  the  district  composed  of  the 
counties  of  Harper  and  Barber  was  held  at  the  town 
of  Attica.  A  tent  had  to  be  provided,  for  the  reason 


232  WHEN  KANSAS  WAS  YOUNG 

that  there  was  no  building  in  the  little  town  with 
sufficient  capacity  to  accommodate  half  the  crowd. 

Mrs.  Mary  Elizabeth  Lease  was  the  woman  orator  of 
the  day.  She  was  then  in  her  prime  and  heyday  of  her 
popularity.  I  say  without  hesitation  that  of  all  the 
women  speakers  I  have  ever  listened  to,  Mrs.  Lease  led 
all  the  rest  in  oratorical  power.  I  will  go  further  and 
say  that  I  have  never  heard  a  man  who  could  so  sway 
an  audience.  She  was  a  woman  of  striking  presence, 
tall,  not  exactly  handsome,  but  attractive  in  appear- 
ance. Nature  endowed  her  with  a  voice  of  wonderful 
volume  and  carrying  power.  If  you  had  not  known 
that  it  was  a  woman  speaking  you  would  not  have 
guessed  it  from  her  voice,  which  was  a  deep  baritone, 
and  yet  sweet  and  clear  as  the  notes  of  a  deep-toned 
bell.  She  was  giving  her  impassioned  advice  to  the 
assembled  Alliance  delegates  to  raise  less  corn  and  more 
hell,  and  before  she  had  finished  ninety  per  cent  of  her 
auditors  were  ready  to  follow  her  advice.  If  she  had 
suggested  that  they  proceed  to  hang  the  nearest  banker, 
I  think  the  rope  would  have  been  furnished  and,  with 
some  fanatical  leader  to  direct,  they  would  have  pro- 
ceeded to  elevate  the  unfortunate  money  leaner  into 
the  atmosphere.  As  a  curtain-raiser  on  that  occasion 
"Iron  Jaw  Brown"  also  made  the  welkin  ring  for  about 
three-quarters  of  an  hour.  Never  to  my  knowledge 
having  seen  a  "welkin"  I  am  a  bit  hazy  about  what  is 
required  to  make  one  ring,  but  I  am  confident  that  if 
there  were  any  welkins  around  in  that  vicinity  on  that 
occasion  they  must  have  rung  when  "Iron  Jaw"  turned 
himself  loose. 

The  Alliance  was  rather  short  on  lawyers  at  that 
time;  in  fact  I  think  the  rules  of  the  order  precluded 
the  admission  of  anyone  to  membership  who  made  the 
practice  of  the  law  his  profession  or  business.  It  was 
not  considered  necessary,  however,  to  have  a  lawyer 


STRIKING  PERSONALITIES  233 

for  judge.  What  they  wanted  was  a  man  who  would 
sit  on  the  bench  and  deal  out  justice  without  regard  to 
established  precedents  or  the  technicalities  of  the  law. 

One  of  the  things  that  Mrs.  Lease  sought  to  impress 
upon  the  minds  of  her  hearers  was  that  farm  mortgages 
ought  to  be  summarily  wiped  out.  They  were,  as  she 
dramatically  explained,  the  chains  that  had  been  forged 
by  the  money  power  to  bind  the  limbs  of  the  toiling 
masses. 

Living  on  his  claim  near  Attica,  was  a  blond  little 
man  with  long  and  flowing  whiskers,  by  the  name  of 
George  Washington  McKay.  It  was  claimed  that  at 
some  time  in  the  past  he  had  attended  a  course  of  law 
lectures  in  Chicago,  but  if  he  had  most  of  the  knowledge 
of  law  he  may  have  acquired  had  evaporated  and  his 
last  name  might  have  been  fittingly  changed  to  Neces- 
sity because  he  knew  no  law.  Who  suggested  to  him 
that  he  ought  to  be  a  candidate  for  judicial  honors  I 
do  not  know.  I  do  not  think  more  than  half  a  dozen 
of  the  delegates  to  the  convention  had  ever  heard  of 
him,  but  his  name  was  sprung  on  the  convention  at  the 
psychological  moment,  and  I  may  say  in  passing  that 
those  were  the  times  when  psychological  moments 
counted.  So  George  W.  McKay  was  nominated  for 
the  important  office  of  judge  of  the  district  court  and 
triumphantly  elected.  While  at  the  time  of  his  election 
he  was  utterly  ignorant  of  court  procedure  and  hardly 
possessed  of  even  a  smattering  knowledge  of  law,  it 
should  be  said  for  George  W.  McKay  that  he  was  very 
far  from  being  a  fool.  During  the  eight  years  he  sat 
upon  the  bench  he  acquired  a  fair  knowledge  of  law  and 
in  all  cases  where  his  political  prejudices  did  not  inter- 
fere with  his  judgment,  he  came  to  be  a  fairly  good 
judge. 

I  have  spoken  of  him  as  a  little  man,  in  that  he  was 
short  in  stature.  Nature  had  been  generous  with  him 


234  WHEN  KANSAS  WAS  YOUNG 

in  the  matter  of  body,  but  parsimonious  in  the  matter 
of  legs.  In  other  words  he  had  a  body  long  enough  for 
a  tall  man  and  legs  rather  too  abbreviated  for  even  a 
short  man.  He  always  wore  when  on  the  bench  a  long 
frock  coat,  which  accentuated  the  length  of  his  body 
and  the  shortness  of  his  lower  limbs.  In  those  days 
the  walks  of  Medicine  Lodge  were  in  bad  repair.  They 
were  board  walks,  not  well  laid  in  the  first  place  and 
badly  warped  by  the  fierce  suns  of  southern  Kansas. 
At  the  first  term  of  court  after  Judge  McKay's  elec- 
tion, a  Medicine  Lodger  was  seen  out  with  his  hammer 
busily  engaged  in  driving  down  the  nails  in  the  sidewalk 
that  led  to  the  courthouse.  Asked  why  this  sudden 
exhibition  of  industry  and  desire  for  municipal  im- 
provement, he  said:  "Well,  I  just  saw  the  new  judge, 
and  said  to  myself,  if  these  here  nails  are  left  stickin' 
up  along  this  sidewalk  they  will  sure  play  thunder  with 
the  seat  of  his  pants.  As  a  loyal  citizen  I  have  respect 
for  the  court,  and  so  seein'  that  nobody  else  will  do  it,  I 
just  decided  that  I  would  hammer  them  down." 

For  a  time  after  he  went  on  the  bench  the  new  judge 
seemed  to  go  on  the  theory  that  the  supreme  court  of 
the  state  was  not  entitled  to  any  particular  considera- 
tion and  that  he  was  not  subject  to  its  jurisdiction,  but 
after  being  jolted  once  or  twice  he  abandoned  that  idea. 
During  the  time  he  was  on  the  bench  he  adhered  strictly 
to  only  one  of  the  theories  on  which  he  was  elected. 
He  insisted  that  there  should  be  no  personal  judgments 
left  over  after  the  sale  of  land  under  mortgage  fore- 
closure. He  would  refuse  to  confirm  the  sale  unless  the 
sale  of  the  land  satisfied  the  mortgage.  Theoretically 
there  seemed  to  be  considerable  justice  in  this,  but  in 
practice  it  worked  out  mostly  to  the  advantage  of  the 
sheriff,  who  received  commissions  on  the  amount  for 
which  the  land  sold  at  sheriff's  sale.  In  Barber  County 
it  happened  that  the  sheriff  during  the  time  when 


STRIKING  PERSONALITIES  235 

mortgage  foreclosures  were  most  abundant  was  a  Re- 
publican, who  profited  to  the  extent  of  several  hundred 
dollars  by  the  ruling  of  the  Populist  judge. 

During  McKay's  term  of  office  the  boundaries  of  his 
district  were  changed  and  the  counties  of  Kingman  and 
Pratt  added.  With  experience  he  became  more  con- 
servative, less  radical,  and  also  a  much  better  lawyer. 
His  integrity,  so  far  as  I  know,  was  never  questioned 
and  during  the  later  years  of  his  service  on  the  bench 
there  was  little  complaint  about  his  rulings  or  the  man- 
ner in  which  he  conducted  the  business  of  the  court. 


The  Stmger  Stung 

One  day  in  the  later  eighties  a  man  of  decidedly 
bucolic  appearance  walked  into  one  of  the  fashionable 
New  York  hotels  and  registered  as  Benjamin  Ashley, 
of  Abilene,  Kansas.  He  wore  ill-fitting,  ready-made 
garments  such  as  were  in  that  day  sold  in  frontier 
towns.  His  head  was  covered  with  the  broad-brimmed 
white  hat  characteristic  of  the  cattle  country,  and  his 
face  and  hands  were  tanned  and  seamed  by  the  winds 
of  the  prairie.  He  was  apparently  unused  to  city 
ways  but  seemed  to  be  well  supplied  with  cash.  He 
notified  the  hotel  clerk  that  he  was  in  New  York  to  have 
his  eyes  doctored  and  that  later  he  intended  to  go  to 
London  where  he  could  obtain  the  services  of  some 
distinguished  oculist  he  had  read  about.  He  gave  out 
the  information  that  he  had  a  big  ranch  out  in  Kansas 
and  a  lot  of  cattle,  and  had  been  mostly  raised  in  the 
saddle.  He  also  looked  the  part.  His  lower  limbs  had 
the  parenthetical  curve  acquired  by  long  sitting  astride 
a  horse  and  his  walk  was  the  gait  of  the  typical  cow 
man. 

He  had  some  peculiar  habits.     One  was  to  get  up 


236  WHEN  KANSAS  WAS  YOUNG 

every  morning  at  what  to  New  Yorkers  seemed  an 
unearthly  hour  and  take  a  ride  on  horseback.  On 
these  rides  he  used  his  well-worn  rawhide  bridle  and 
Mexican  saddle.  Most  of  the  rest  of  the  day,  except 
when  he  went  ostensibly  to  call  on  his  physician,  he 
loafed  about  the  hotel,  picking  up  such  acquaintances 
as  he  could  after  the  free  and  friendly  habit  of  the 
West.  He  was  a  reasonably  free  spender  and  not 
averse  at  all  to  standing  treat,  but  so  far  as  he  was 
personally  concerned  he  did  not  indulge  to  any  con- 
siderable extent  in  "high  balls"  or  any  form  of  spirit- 
uous liquor,  contenting  himself  almost  always  with  a 
lemonade  or  vichy. 

One  day  the  hotel  clerk  observed  the  mild  mannered 
man  from  the  West  strolling  through  the  hotel  lobby 
in  company  with  a  young  man  whose  face  was  well 
known  to  the  regular  promenaders  on  Broadway.  This 
young  man  was  always  faultlessly  dressed,  clean 
shaven,  of  prominent  features  and  good  manners.  He 
had  a  keen,  glittering  eye  and  peculiarly  thin,  tightly 
compressed  lips.  With  his  new-found  friend,  the  weak- 
eyed  and  guileless  child  of  the  prairies,  this  young  man 
sat  for  some  time  in  the  bar  room  of  the  hotel.  It  was 
noticed,  too,  that  at  the  urgent  invitation  of  the  thin- 
lipped  young  man  Mr.  Ashley  forsook  his  usual  ab- 
stemious habits  and  partook  rather  freely  of  cham- 
pagne— at  the  expense  of  the  young  man. 

When  the  well-dressed  New  Yorker  had  departed,  the 
hotel  clerk  called  the  Westerner  and  asked,  "Mr. 
Ashley,  how  long  since  you  have  been  in  New  York?" 

"Near  eight  year,"  replied  Ashley,  "never  was  here 
afore  that  and  ain't  never  been  here  since  till  now." 

"Do  you  know  the  man  who  just  left  you?" 

"Yes,  met  him  two  nights  ago  at  the  Madison  Square 
Garden.  I  couldn't  buy  a  seat  and  he  offered  me  one 
of  his;  said  his  friend  hadn't  come  and  he  would  be 
glad  to  accommodate  a  stranger,  so  him  and  me  sat 


STRIKING  PERSONALITIES  237 

there  together,  talkin'  and  watchin5  the  sights.  He 
seems  to  be  a  mighty  nice  sort  of  a  feller." 

"I  have  no  doubt  of  that,"  said  the  clerk,  with  an 
air  of  superior  wisdom  and  hardly  suppressed  sarcasm. 
"That  young  man  is  'Hungry  Joe,'  one  of  the  most 
noted  confidence  men  in  America!" 

"You  don't  say  so?"  drawled  the  Westerner.  "Well, 
I'll  be  doggoned!  Who'd  a  thought  it?  Why  he  is 
about  the  most  friendly  feller  I  have  met  in  this  man's 
town.  Offered  to  show  me  'round  and  set  up  the  fizz 
water  and  put  himself  out  of  the  way  to  make  things 
pleasant  for  me.  You  must  surely  be  mistaken  about 
him  bein'  one  of  these  here  confidence  men." 

Then  Mr.  Ashley  strolled  away,  looking  thoughtful. 
That  evening  after  dinner  "Hungry  Joe"  called  for 
Mr.  Ashley.  As  they  came  through  the  office  the  weak- 
eyed  man  from  Kansas  took  from  an  inside  pocket  a 
large  wallet  from  which  he  extracted  about  $500  in 
bills  and  deposited  the  wallet  with  the  rest  of  its  con- 
tents with  the  hotel.  "Hungry  Joe"  watched  the  pro- 
ceeding with  passive  face  but  gleaming  eye,  and  the  two 
went  away  together.  "Another  sucker  to  be  taken  in," 
mused  the  hotel  clerk  as  he  looked  after  the  pair.  It 
was  nearly  morning  when  Mr.  Ashley  returned  to  the 
hotel;  just  in  time,  in  fact,  to  take  his  usual  early 
morning  ride.  When  he  returned  he  drew  another  $200 
and  started  out  again. 

"I  have  warned  you,  Mr.  Ashley,"  said  the  wise  clerk 
from  behind  his  immaculate  shirt  front  and  gleaming 
diamond.  "It  is  your  own  fault  if  'Hungry  Joe'  trims 
you." 

It  was  a  little  after  midnight  when  the  ranchman 
returned  and  deposited  $300  with  the  clerk,  remarking 
that  these  New  Yorkers  might  be  stiff  on  bunco,  but 
they  were  a  little  behind  the  times  on  draw  poker. 

"Out  in  my  country,"  he  said  with  a  swagger,  "two 
deuces  and  a  bowie  will  open  a  jack  pot  every  time." 


238  WHEN  KANSAS  WAS  YOUNG 

For  several  days  after  this  Mr.  Ashley  passed  the 
time  in  comparative  seclusion  and  quiet.  Then  he 
yielded  again  to  the  seductions  of  the  well  dressed 
young  man  with  the  thin  lips.  In  a  day  or  two  he  drew 
$1,000  from  the  hotel  safe  and  seemed  annoyed  when 
the  clerk  again  reminded  him  that  he  had  warned  him. 

"No  game  ever  fazed  me  yet,"  he  said  doggedly.  "A 
man  who  kin  hold  his  end  up  with  them  Kansas  cowmen 
isn't  goin'  to  be  bested  by  any  of  these  here  durned 
broadcloth  fellers  in  New  York." 

"It's  no  use,"  mused  the  clerk  after  Ashley  had  gone. 
"You  are  wasting  your  breath  trying  to  save  these 
country  rubes.  Might  as  well  let  them  be  skinned  first 
as  last." 

The  next  day  Ashley  came  back  for  another  thou- 
sand and  later  for  $850  more. 

"It's  no  use,  no  use,"  sighed  the  clerk.  "There  is 
one  born  every  minute." 

That  afternoon  the  weak-eyed  Westerner  went  for  a 
ride  with  "Hungry  Joe."  His  face  had  been  sad  all 
morning,  but  it  was  noticed  on  his  return  that  he  seemed 
somewhat  brighter. 

In  the  evening  "Hungry  Joe"  and  two  of  his  well- 
known  fellow  confidence  men  spent  several  hours  with 
Mr.  Ashley,  whose  weak  eyes  made  it  necessary  that  he 
keep  his  broad  hat  pulled  well  down  over  his  forehead. 
When  the  three  men  went  away  a  close  observer  might 
have  noticed  the  .shadow  of  a  smile  playing  about  the 
mouth  of  Mr.  Ashley.  Straight  from  the  table  where 
they  had  had  the  long  conference,  the  three  men  went 
to  the  telegraph  office  and  sent  the  following  message: 

Postmaster,  Abilene,   Kansas: 

Do  you  know  Benjamin  Ashley,  cattle  raiser?  Tele- 
graph full  particulars  at  my  expense. 

R.  DICKSON, 
Brower  House,  New  York. 


STRIKING  PERSONALITIES  239 

When  the  reply  came  it  evidently  was  in  all  respects 
satisfactory,  and  within  two  days  Mr.  Ashley  received 
a  visit  from  the  three  confidence  men  and  a  lawyer. 
The  head  porter  of  the  hotel  was  called  up  into  the 
room  after  the  visitors  had  been  there  an  hour  or  more 
and  requested  to  append  his  signature  to  a  certain 
document  as  a  witness.  This  done,  a  large  sum  of 
money  was  paid  over  to  Mr.  Ashley  by  "Hungry  Joe" 
and  the  weak-eyed,  mild-mannered  Westerner  deposited 
$14,000  cold  cash  with  the  hotel  clerk,  to  whom  he 
explained  that  he  had  sold  a  half  interest  in  his  Kansas 
ranch  to  his  new  found  friend,  who  wished  to  retire  from 
city  life. 

A  couple  of  days  later  Mr.  Ashley  took  passage  for 
Liverpool  on  one  of  the  passenger  liners  and  was  "seen 
off"  by  his  New  York  friends  in  the  most  approved 
style.  They  toasted  him  in  "yellow  label"  and  even 
presented  him  with  a  basket  of  flowers.  The  crude 
Westerner  was  almost  overcome  by  the  attention  and 
told  them  he  would  soon  return  and  have  more  good 
times  with  them. 

It  was  just  eleven  days  after  this  sailing  that  a  tall, 
slender,  pale-faced  gentleman  entered  the  hotel,  ac- 
companied by  numerous  steamer  trunks,  steamer  chairs, 
and  other  impedimenta  of  ocean  travel.  He  signed  the 
register  "Benjamin  Ashley,  London,  England,"  in  a 
handwriting  that  was  rather  strikingly  similar  to  that 
of  the  Mr.  Ashley  who  had  sailed  eleven  days  before. 
The  clerk  who  had  been  bending  over  the  register  looked 
at  the  tall,  slender,  well  groomed  stranger  in  amaze- 
ment which  was  increased  as  he  noted  that  his  speech, 
like  that  of  the  other  Ashley,  had  a  sort  of  American- 
ized English  accent.  In  a  sort  of  daze  he  assigned 
him  a  room  and  that  evening  saw  to  it  that  the  full 
name  and  address  of  Benjamin  Ashley  was  published 
among  the  list  of  arrivals  from  abroad. 

As  he  expected,  the  first  caller  in  the  morning  was 


240  WHEN  KANSAS  WAS  YOUNG 

"Hungry  Joe,"  who  sent  up  his  card  with  the  request 
to  see  Mr.  Ashley.  The  word  was  brought  back  that 
Mr.  Ashley  would  see  him  in  the  drawing  room.  When 
the  tall,  slender  pale  Englishman  entered  the  drawing 
room,  "Hungry  Joe"  was  seated  in  a  large  arm  chair. 
He  merely  glanced  at  the  stranger  and  then  looked 
away.  Mr.  Ashley,  seeing  no  one  else  in  the  room,  ad- 
vanced to  where  "Hungry  Joe"  was  sitting  and  courte- 
ously asked:  "Were  you  wanting  to  see  me,  sir?  I  am 
Mr.  Ashley." 

"Eh?"  queried  the  confidence  man  with  a  startled 
look.  "You  are  not  Mr.  Benjamin  Ashley?" 

"Precisely,"  answered  the  Englishman. 

"Not  of  Kansas?" 

"Yes,  of  Abilene,  Kansas.    How  can  I  serve  you?" 

The  thin  lips  of  the  confidence  man  went  white.  He 
surveyed  the  tall  Englishman  in  a  dazed  fashion  for  a 
few  moments  and  then  asked: 

"Do  you  own  a  large  cattle  ranch  thirty-five  miles 
south  of  Abilene?" 

"I  believe  so.    Why  do  you  ask?" 

"Been  to  Europe  to  have  your  eyes  doctored?" 

"Yes.  I  have  been  abroad  four  months;  but,  my 
young  friend,  these  questions  are  rather  odd,  don't  you 
know.  Please  explain  yourself." 

"Odd,"  almost  shouted  the  thin  lipped  confidence 
man.  "Well  I  should  think  they  are.  If  you  are 
Benjamin  Ashley,  and  if  you  do  own  that  ranch,  the 
cleverest  man  in  the  country  has  given  me  a  deal,  that's 
all.  Why  it  isn't  two  weeks  since  I  and  two  friends 

bought  a  half  interest  in  that  ranch  and  by the 

man  who  sold  us  stopped  at  this  same  hotel." 

Mr.  Ashley  seemed  to  be  astonished  at  this  informa- 
tion and  called  the  clerk,  who  gave  a  careful  description 
of  the  other  Mr.  Ashley.  "Hungry  Joe"  told  how  he 
had  won  some  $3,250  at  cards  from  this  pretended 


STRIKING  PERSONALITIES  241 

Ashley,  who  said  he  was  on  his  way  to  Europe  to  have 
his  eyes  treated.  He  had  represented  himself  as  the 
owner  of  the  Ashley  ranch  and  at  his  request  the  con- 
fidence man  had  telegraphed  the  postmaster  at  Abilene, 
who  had  replied,  giving  detailed  description  of  the 
ranch  and  estimating  its  value  at  fully  $50,000  and 
had  added  that  Mr.  Ashley  had  gone  abroad  for  medi- 
cal treatment.  The  other  Ashley  had  represented  that 
he  wanted  to  make  certain  expenditures  in  Europe  but 
on  account  of  his  losses  at  cards  he  could  not  do  it 
unless  he  could  sell  an  interest  in  his  Kansas  ranch.  He 
had  produced  deeds  to  establish  his  title,  which  had 
satisfied  even  the  lawyers,  and  "Hungry  Joe"  and  his 
pals,  thinking  here  was  a  chance  to  get  at  least  $25,000 
worth  of  property  for  $14,000,  had  raised  the  money 
among  them. 

"Really,"  observed  the  Englishman,  "I  am  sorry  for 
you.  You  have  undoubtedly  been  swindled.  I  will  not 
have  the  slightest  trouble  in  establishing  my  identity 
and  ownership.  As  to  your  friend,  the  bogus  Mr. 
Ashley,  he  is  probably  one  of  my  cowboys,  Henry 
Barnes  by  name.  The  description  certainly  fits  him. 
He  came  to  the  ranch  about  fourteen  months  ago  and 
asked  for  work.  Now  I  remember,  he  wasn't  like  the 
other  boys.  He  may  have  been  hiding  for  some  crime 
for  all  I  know;  on  the  plains  we  do  not  inquire  much 
into  such  matters.  He  did  his  work  all  right  and 
seemed  rather  more  refined  than  the  others,  though  he 
tried  to  conceal  it.  I  heard  once  or  twice  from  my 
men  that  he  played  a  very  cold  hand  at  poker." 

"He  does,"  said  "Hungry  Joe"  mournfully. 

"He  was  an  expert  penman,  now  that  I  come  to  think 
of  it,"  continued  Mr.  Ashley,  "and  did  some  of  that 
kind  of  work  for  me.  He  was  there  when  I  came  away." 

"And  this  is  the  cuss — damn  him,"  burst  in  the  de- 
frauded confidence  man,  "who  got  off  to  Europe  with 


242  WHEN  KANSAS  WAS  YOUNG 

my  money.  What's  worse  he  went  away  full  of  my 
champagne  and  smelling  my  basket  of  flowers.  That 
man  is  a  d — d  swindler;  that's  what  he  is." 


Boston  Corbett 

Some  time  before  the  Civil  War  there  migrated  from 
England  to  America  a  short,  stocky  youth  who  was 
destined  to  play  a  part  in  one  of  the  world's  great 
tragedies.  John  Corbett  was  a  descendant  of  the 
"Roundheads,"  as  the  men  were  called  who  made  up  the 
army  of  Cromwell,  the  most  remarkable  body  of  fight- 
ing men  that  ever  followed  a  leader  to  battle.  Filled 
with  a  religious  fanaticism  which  dispelled  fear,  they 
went  to  conflict  chanting  the  psalms  of  David  as  their 
battle  songs;  and  welcoming  death  as  a  passport  to 
Paradise,  they  dashed  themselves  upon  and  broke  to 
pieces  the  bravest  and  best  drilled  battalions  of  Europe. 
They  fought  without  excitement,  boasting,  or  jubila- 
tion, but  with  a  firm  confidence  that  the  God  of  battles 
marched  with  them  and  made  them  invincible  by  the 
power  of  His  might. 

Fanaticism  is  a  full  brother  of  madness  and  in  the 
blood  of  many  of  these  followers  of  Cromwell  there  was 
the  taint  of  insanity.  The  young  "Roundhead"  at- 
tended a  religious  revival  in  the  city  of  Boston  shortly 
after  landing  in  America  and  became  a  convert  imbued 
with  all  the  religious  fervor  of  his  forebears.  In  honor 
of  the  locality  where  he  felt  he  had  received  salvation 
he  changed  his  name  from  John  to  Boston  and  from 
that  time  on  was  known  as  Boston  Corbett. 

When  the  War  of  the  Rebellion  broke  out  he  enlisted 
in  a  Massachusetts  regiment  and  throughout  his  service 
showed  the  stoical  intrepidity,  the  indifference  to  dan- 
ger and  death  which  had  characterized  his  ancestors, 


STRIKING  PERSONALITIES  243 

who,  chanting  their  psalms  and  calling  on  the  name  of 
the  Lord  of  Hosts,  carried  consternation  and  defeat  to 
the  royalist  armies. 

On  one  occasion  Boston  Corbett  was  sent  out  with  a 
scouting  party,  which  was  surrounded  by  Mosby's 
guerrillas.  All  of  the  scouts  surrendered  except 
Corbett,  who  took  refuge  in  a  dry  well  and  stood  off 
Mosby's  command  until  his  ammunition  was  exhausted. 
When  he  ceased  firing,  the  rebels,  supposing  that  he 
was  either  killed  or  desperately  wounded,  peeped  over 
the  rim  of  the  well  and  discovered  him  sitting  calmly 
at  the  bottom,  munching  hardtack  as  unconcerned  as 
if  there  were  no  war.  When  captured  he  was  sent  to 
Andersonville,  where  he  spent  ten  months  in  that  prison 
hell. 

On  most  of  the  soldiers  during  the  war,  religion  sat 
lightly,  but  with  the  fanatical  descendant  of  the 
"Roundhead,"  war  only  deepened  his  fanaticism  and 
religious  fervor.  He  was  a  regular  attendant  and  par- 
ticipant in  the  prayer  meetings  held  by  some  of  the 
men  in  his  regiment  and  it  was  the  Voice  of  Sergeant 
Corbett  which  sounded  the  most  fervent  petitions  to 
the  Throne  of  Grace. 

When  the  immortal  Lincoln  was  stricken  down  by 
the  bullet  of  the  half -mad  actor,  Corbett  was  among 
the  soldiers  sent  in  pursuit  of  the  assassin.  He  re- 
garded himself  as  an  avenger  of  blood,  one  selected 
by  the  Almighty  to  rid  the  world  of  the  murderer  of 
the  president. 

Speaking  of  it  years  afterward,  Corbett  said: 
"During  the  intervals  between  our  different  skirmishes, 
I  attended  a  prayer  meeting  one  night  and  the  leader 
said,  'Brother  Corbett,  lead  us  in  prayer.'  I  prayed, 
'O  Lord,  lay  not  innocent  blood  to  our  charge,  but  bring 
the  guilty  speedily  to  punishment.'  Afterward,  when 
the  assassin  lay  at  my  feet  a  wounded  man,  I  saw  that 


244  WHEN  KANSAS  WAS  YOUNG 

a  bullet  had  taken  effect  an  inch  back  of  the  ear,  and 
I  remembered  that  Mr.  Lincoln  was  shot  in  about  the 
same  part  of  the  head.  I  exclaimed,  'What  a  God  we 
have!'" 

The  shooting  of  Wilkes  Booth  by  Boston  Corbett 
was  contrary  to  orders  and  he  was  court  martialed  for 
disobedience,  but  no  punishment  was  inflicted,  so  far 
as  the  record  shows. 

It  was  some  years  after  the  war  that  Boston  Corbett 
came  to  Kansas  and  filed  on  a  homestead  in  Cloud 
County.  It  was  a  neglected  eighty  acres  he  acquired, 
and  nature  had  not  really  fitted  him  for  a  farmer. 
Here  in  the  solitude  of  the  prairie  he  began  to  brood 
over  things.  He  imagined  that  the  friends  of  J.  Wilkes 
Booth  were  plotting  against  his  life.  He  was  possessed 
of  a  revolver,  and  stories  are  told  of  his  marvelous  skill 
in  the  use  of  the  weapon.  Lying  prone  on  his  back  he 
would  shoot  hawks  circling  high  in  the  air  above  him,  or 
riding  at  full  speed  on  the  only  animal  he  possessed,  a 
pony,  he  would  shoot  fleeing  rabbits,  rarely  missing  a 
shot. 

Some  of  the  young  people  used  to  meet  near  his 
place  on  Sundays  to  play  ball.  He  regarded  this  as  a 
desecration  of  the  Lord's  day  and  proceeded  to  break 
up  the  game  by  command,  as  he  asserted,  of  Jehovah. 
Complaint  was  made  by  the  players  and  Boston  was 
arrested.  The  trial  was  to  be  held  in  the  office  of  a 
local  justice  of  the  peace.  Corbett  came  in  on  the  day 
appointed,  watched  the  proceedings  with  gloomy 
countenance  for  a  time,  and  then,  drawing  his  revolver, 
commanded  that  the  sons  of  Belial,  constituting  the 
court  and  jury,  should  disperse.  They  did — and  that 
right  speedily.  The  justice  of  the  peace,  a  large  and 
fleshy  man,  hid  behind  a  stairway  while  jurymen,  wit- 
nesses, and  town  loafers  vied  with  each  other  for  pos- 
session of  the  door  and  windows,  as  places  of  exit. 
Having  scattered  the  forces  of  iniquity  in  the  name  of 


STRIKING  PERSONALITIES  245 

the  Lord,  Corbett  mounted  his  pony  and  returned  un- 
disturbed to  his  lonesome  shanty  on  the  claim. 

It  was  in  the  year  1887  that  the  member  from  Cloud 
County  in  an  impassioned  speech  nominated  the  slayer 
of  J.  Wilkes  Booth  for  the  position  of  assistant  door- 
keeper of  the  lower  house. 

Those  were  the  days  when  ex-soldiers  of  the  Civil 
War  still  dominated  the  politics  of  Kansas  and  Boston 
Corbett  was  selected  as  assistant  doorkeeper  without 
opposition — although  one  member  who  knew  Boston 
was  heard  to  remark  that  the  legislature  would  be  in 
luck  if  Corbett  didn't  get  a  notion  in  his  head  that  he 
was  called  by  the  Lord  to  kill  off  a  few  lawmakers 
before  the  session  ended.  For  several  weeks  after  his 
election  Boston  attended  to  the  not  very  onerous  duties 
of  doorkeeper  for  the  west  gallery  of  the  house.  He 
was  a  peculiar,  if  not  striking  figure.  His  hair  hung 
down  to  his  shoulders  and  was  parted  in  the  middle. 
He  was  not  averse  to  answering  questions,  but  his  face 
was  never  lighted  by  a  smile. 

Probably  the  session  would  have  passed  without  any 
striking  incident  so  far  as  he  was  concerned,  if  he  had 
not  become  interested  in  the  Salvation  Army,  which 
was  just  then  especially  active.  The  methods  of  these 
religionists  appealed  to  the  militant  soul  of  the 
"Roundhead." 

Night  after  night  he  marched  with  the  devoted  band 
which,  with  sound  of  drum  and  horn  and  clashing 
cymbal,  with  strident  song  and  vociferous  prayer, 
assailed  the  battlements  of  sin  and  invoked  the  aid  and 
blessing  of  the  Most  High.  The  religious  fervor  that 
stirred  the  blood  and  brain  of  Boston  Corbett  led  him 
to  the  conclusion  that  a  number  of  legislators  should  be 
summarily  removed  from  the  places  they  occupied  and 
that  the  legislative  hall  should  be  emptied,  even  as 
Christ  drove  the  money  changers  from  the  Temple  in 
Jerusalem. 


246  WHEN  KANSAS  WAS  YOUNG 

It  was  a  sight  calculated  to  arouse  the  members  from 
the  drowsy  dullness  that  had  settled  over  the  routine 
proceedings,  when  the  little  man  was  seen  one  morning 
standing  at  the  front  of  the  gallery  in  the  house,  his 
trusty  gun  in  hand  and  his  eyes  blazing  with  the  light 
of  fanatical  insanity.  The  sergeant-at-arms  sent  up 
an  assistant  to  urge  him  to  put  away  his  gun,  but 
Corbett  made  him  beat  a  hasty  retreat.  The  sergeant- 
at-arms  then  went  up  in  person  and  retired  with  speed, 
if  not  with  grace  of  movement,  as  he  fell  down  the 
gallery  stair. 

Finally  a  number  of  police  and  deputy  sheriffs  were 
called  in.  Boston  was  overpowered,  taken  before  the 
probate  judge  and  there  adjudged  insane.  Senator 
Charles  Curtis,  at  that  time  county  attorney,  con- 
ducted the  examination  concerning  his  sanity.  A  few 
months  afterward  the  slayer  of  Booth  managed  to  get 
away  from  the  hospital  guard,  mounted  a  horse  he 
found  near  the  asylum  grounds  and  fled.  A  few  miles 
from  Topeka  he  left  the  horse  with  a  note  requesting 
that  it  be  returned  to  its  owner.  Almost  a  third  of  a 
century  has  passed  since  then  and,  while  there  have  been 
rumors  that  he  had  been  seen  here  and  there,  no  definite 
word  has  ever  come  from  Boston  Corbett  since  that 
spring  day  when  he  fled  away. 

Probably  he  has  long  since  died,  pursued  to  the  last, 
no  doubt,  by  the  fancy  that  his  enemies  were  pursuing 
him  and  seeking  revenge  for  the  killing  of  the  slayer  of 
America's  greatest  president. 


A  Perfect  Defense 

A  good  many  old  timers  will  remember  Johnny  Potts, 
of  the  T-5  range.  Johnny  seemed  to  hanker  for  a 
reputation  as  a  bad  man  and  tried  to  earn  it  and  live 


STRIKING  PERSONALITIES  247 

up  to  it.  Quite  possibly  he  wasn't  really  as  bad  as  he 
thought  he  was,  but  it  may  be  said  for  him  that  he 
wasn't  merely  a  bluffer  as  some  cowboys  who  posed  as 
bad  men  were.  It  may  have  been  native  courage  or  it 
may  have  been  mostly  vanity  that  made  him  show 
physical  courage,  but  the  fact  was  that  he  was  really 
a  dangerous  man  when  his  temper  was  roused  and  es- 
pecially when  he  had  a  drink  or  two  under  his  belt.  He 
was  possessed  of  a  mean  and  surly  disposition  and  was 
one  of  the  cases,  fortunately  not  very  numerous  among 
cattle  herders,  who  delighted  in  trying  to  convince 
tenderfeet  that  he  was  worse  than  he  really  was. 

By  long  practice  he  acquired  considerable  skill  in 
handling  the  revolver  and  while  he  could  not  draw  and 
shoot  with  the  lightning  rapidity  acquired  by  men  like 
Billie  the  Kid,  or  Wild  Bill  or  Wyatt  Earp,  he  could 
draw  his  gun  quicker  than  most  men,  even  among 
those  who  called  themselves  expert  gunmen.  It  pleased 
him,  when  in  a  crowd,  to  draw  his  gun  suddenly  and 
fire  it  rapidly  either  into  the  air  or  down  into  the 
ground.  In  one  respect  he  differed  from  a  good  many 
men  who  liked  to  shoot  holes  in  the  atmosphere.  Most 
of  them  liked  to  make  noises  with  their  mouths.  They 
would  ride  through  the  streets  shooting  in  the  air  and 
yelling  like  wild  Comanches.  That  was  simply  their 
way  of  grand-standing.  Most  of  them  were  really 
harmless  and  only  hurt  other  people  by  accident.  They 
did  not  really  intend  to  kill. 

With  Johnny  Potts  it  was  different.  He  did  no 
yelling.  There  was  no  expression  of  enjoyment  on  his 
face.  He  was  a  sullen,  silent  man,  and  seemed  to  want 
to  impress  the  crowd  with  his  lack  of  vocal  expression. 
I  have  seen  him  empty  his  gun  in  the  ground  with  no 
apparent  purpose  except  to  create  the  impression  that 
he  would  just  as  leave  shoot  a  man  as  shoot  the  ground 
if  he  had  any  sort  of  pretext  for  doing  it. 


248  WHEN  KANSAS  WAS  YOUNG 

Webster,  who  also  worked  on  the  T-5  range,  was  of 
a  different  type.  Johnny  Potts  was  uneducated,  coarse 
in  his  limited  speech,  and  with  no  grace  of  manner  or 
address.  Webster,  on  the  other  hand,  was  a  man  of 
considerable  polish  and  had  a  fair  education.  He  was 
a  man  of  considerable  reading,  and  capable  of  appear- 
ing in  almost  any  kind  of  society.  While  Johnny  Potto 
was  rather  undersized  and  not  prepossessing  in  appear- 
ance, Webster  was,  as  cowboys  went,  a  sort  of  Beau 
Brummel,  who  liked  to  cast  off  the  unlovely  garments 
of  the  range  and  appear  in  civilized  raiment,  not  the 
garish,  loud  sort  some  cowboys  and  tin  horn  gamblers 
delight  in,  but  really  tasty  clothes,  for  Webster  had 
taste  in  dress  as  well  as  in  speech.  It  was  perhaps 
natural  that  these  two  men,  so  different  in  manners  and 
speech,  should  not  love  each  other,  and  it  was  also 
almost  inevitable  that  sooner  or  later  there  would  be  a 
quarrel  to  the  death. 

Just  what  the  quarrel  was  about  I  do  not  now  recall 
if  I  ever  knew.  The  story  was  told  me  by  another.  It 
came  at  breakfast  time,  I  think,  at  headquarters  camp. 
Both  men  reached  for  their  guns  apparently  at  the 
same  instant.  They  were  standing  by  the  trough  used 
both  for  watering  the  camp  horses  and  for  the  pre- 
prandial  ablutions  of  the  men.  Johnny  Potts  was  the 
fraction  of  a  second  quicker  on  the  draw,  which  seemed 
rather  strange,  for  Webster  was  known  as  the  cooler 
and  quicker  man.  They  were  within  a  few  feet  of  each 
other  when  the  impromptu  duel  commenced.  There  was 
no  chance  to  miss  at  that  distance,  even  if  they  had 
been  less  skilled  than  they  were,  but  the  hammer  of 
Potts'  gun  came  harmlessly  down  on  an  empty  or 
defective  cartridge  and  the  next  instant  he  fell  dead  as 
the  bullet  of  Webster's  gun  tore  its  way  through  his 
heart. 

It  was  many  years  afterward,  when  I  happened  to  be 


STRIKING  PERSONALITIES  249 

talking  of  old  times  with  the  veteran  ex-foreman  of 
the  Drum  range,  Jack  Crewdson,  and  mentioned  the 
fatal  battle  between  John  Potts  and  Webster.  I  re- 
marked that  both  men  showed  a  lot  of  nerve,  for  there 
was  every  probability  that  both  of  them  would  die, 
shooting  at  that  distance  and  both  being  quick  on  the 
draw  and  expert  shots,  and  I  also  remarked  on  the  luck 
of  Webster. 

"It  wasn't  luck,"  said  the  veteran  cow  man  slowly. 
"Potts'  gun  had  been  fixed.  That  was  why  Webster 
was  slow  on  the  draw.  But  you  see  it  made  a  perfect 
defense  in  case  he  had  been  arrested,  taken  to  Fort 
Smith,  and  tried  for  murder!" 


Captain  Pamter,  Detective 

A  good  many  people  in  Kansas  knew  Captain  Bob 
Painter,  of  Meade,  as  lawyer,  journalist,  department 
commander  of  the  G.  A.  R.,  ranchman,  and  member  of 
the  legislature,  but  perhaps  only  a  few  know  that  he 
has  a  record  as  a  detective  that  would  do  credit  to  a 
Burns  or  a  Pinkerton.  I  am  indebted  for  the  material 
out  of  which  this  story  is  constructed  to  my  old-time 
friend,  Will  H.  Lininger,  formerly  of  Topeka,  now 
residing  in  Chicago,  and  holding  the  important  position 
of  assistant  manager  of  the  Springfield  Fire  &  Marine 
Insurance  Company.  I  might  also  say  that  the  facts 
on  which  the  story  is  founded  were  not  published  by 
Captain  Bob  Painter  and  only  told  by  him  on  solicita- 
tion. 

More  than  a  third  of  a  century  ago  the  First  Na- 
tional Bank  of  Cincinnati,  Ohio,  one  day  consigned  to 
the  United  States  Express  Company  a  package  con- 
taining $10,000  in  currency  to  be  delivered  to  a  bank 
in  Van  Wert,  Ohio.  At  Greenville,  Ohio,  the  package 


250  WHEN  KANSAS  WAS  YOUNG 

had  to  be  transferred  to  another  line  of  railroad.  A 
quiet,  inoffensive  workingman,  encumbered  with  a  wife 
and  family  drawing  a  monthly  stipend  of  some  forty 
dollars  per  month,  out  of  which  munificent  sum  he  had 
to  support  his  family  and  pay  for  the  feed  of  his  horse, 
hauled  the  express  packages  from  the  car  to  the  local 
office  of  the  express  company  and  from  the  express  com- 
pany's office  to  the  other  depot.  On  this  particular  day 
this  humble  citizen  noticed  this  package  and  seeing  that 
it  was  from  a  national  bank,  drew  the  conclusion  that  it 
probably  contained  currency.  In  the  hurry  of  trans- 
ferring freight  and  express  the  package  was  left  in  pos- 
session of  the  express  messenger  and  carried  on  past  the 
station.  The  humble  citizen  discovered  that  the  pack- 
age was  not  in  his  wagon  and  wired  the  messenger,  who 
found  it  and  returned  it  by  the  next  passing  express 
train. 

Perhaps  it  was  when  the  transfer  man  saw  it  the 
second  time  that  the  temptation  came  to  him,  and  when 
you  think  it  over  it  is  not  greatly  to  be  wondered  at 
that  a  man  trying  to  support  a  family  and  a  horse  on 
an  income  of  $40  a  month  should  be  tempted  when  a 
package  of  money  is  left  in  his  care.  So  it  came  about 
that  the  humble  transfer  man  carefully  undid  the 
package,  abstracted  the  $10,000  in  currency  and  re- 
placed it  with  blank  paper;  then  he  delivered  the 
package  to  the  local  express  office,  where  it  was  locked 
in  the  safe  and  the  next  morning  delivered  by  the  same 
transfer  man  to  the  express  agent  at  Van  Wert  and 
thence  to  the  bank  to  which  it  was  directed.  When  the 
Van  Wert  bank  opened  the  package  and  found  the 
currency  gone  the  Pinkerton  detective  agency  was 
called  in  to  discover  the  thief.  The  Cincinnati  bank 
brought  suit  against  the  United  States  Express  Com- 
pany and  secured  judgment.  This  put  it  up  to  the 
express  company  to  find  the  party  who  had  tampered 


STRIKING  PERSONALITIES  251 

with  the  package  or  stand  to  lose  all  of  the  $10,000. 
Suspicion  rested  on  the  express  messenger  who  carried 
the  package  past  the  station  where  it  should  have  been 
transferred,  and  the  agent  of  the  express  company  at 
Circleville.  Somewhat  strangely  the  detectives  did  not 
seem  to  suspect  the  humble  citizen  who  drove  the  one- 
horse  transfer  wagon,  of  being  the  guilty  man. 

The  express  agent  was  arrested,  tried,  and  acquitted, 
but  afterward  dismissed,  and  the  humble  transfer  man, 
who  was  the  leading  witness  at  the  trial,  was  appointed 
local  agent  for  the  express  company  which  he  had 
robbed.  But  a  guilty  conscience  made  him  uneasy. 
The  currency  was  in  bills  of  large  denominations  for 
the  most  part  and  the  thief  was  afraid  to  spend  it 
and  no  doubt  afraid  to  keep  it  in  his  possession.  After 
a  few  months  he  threw  up  his  job  and  with  his  family 
moved  to  Nebraska  and  from  there  to  Meade  County, 
Kansas.  He  tried  the  real  estate  business  with  in- 
different success  for  a  time,  then  gave  it  up  and  moved 
to  a  little  town  up  in  the  northern  part  of  the  county 
and  started  a  small  general  store.  And  still  he  was 
afraid  apparently  to  use  the  money  he  had  taken  from 
the  express  package  back  in  Ohio.  He  lived  modestly, 
was  known  as  a  quiet,  unassuming  man,  and  popular 
with  his  frontier  neighbors. 

Notwithstanding  the  fact  that  he  had  the  money  from 
the  rifled  express  package  in  his  possession,  he  bor- 
rowed money  at  the  extortionate  rates  of  interest 
charged  in  that  new  country,  still,  no  doubt,  filled  with 
the  fear  that  if  he  were  to  begin  showing  those  large 
bills  he  would  be  suspected.  And  he  had  reason  for 
his  fear.  The  express  company  had  failed  to  find  the 
thief,  but  had  not  forgotten.  The  detectives  were  still 
tirelessly  hunting  for  the  criminal  and  while  they  did 
not  believe  that  the  quiet  transfer  man  was  the  thief, 
they  did  suspect  that  he  had  some  knowledge  of  the 


252  WHEN  KANSAS  WAS  YOUNG 

real  criminal.  So  it  came  about  that  Captain  Bob 
Painter  was  employed  to  help  unravel  the  mystery. 
Captain  Bob  had  had  considerable  experience  with 
criminals  and  for  some  reason  had  a  hunch  that  the 
quiet  storekeeper  was  the  guilty  man  and  that  the 
currency  was  secreted  somewhere  about  his  premises. 
He  cultivated  the  acquaintance  of  the  storekeeper  and 
finally  proposed  a  business  partnership  with  him  to  deal 
in  equities  in  land. 

In  the  eighties  there  was  a  great  land  and  town  boom 
in  western  Kansas.  A  flood  of  immigrants,  a  quarter 
of  a  million  strong,  took  possession  of  the  government 
lands  clear  out  to  the  Colorado  line.  Loan  agents  came 
with  the  tide  and  practically  all  the  lands  were  mort- 
gaged. Then  came  the  reaction,  the  crop  failures  and 
drouths,  and  the  discouraged  homesteaders  forsook  their 
lands  and  left  them  to  be  taken  by  the  mortgage  com- 
panies. The  result  was  that  most  of  the  mortgage 
companies  that  loaned  money  in  western  Kansas  went 
broke,  unable  to  carry  the  load  of  defaulted  mortgages, 
the  payment  of  which  they  had  guaranteed  to  the 
eastern  purchasers. 

Captain  Bob's  proposition  to  the  storekeeper  was  to 
get  hold  of  the  equities  in  these  mortgaged  lands  and 
sell  them  subject  to  the  mortgages.  Of  course,  the 
equities  could  be  bought  for  a  song,  and  it  didn't  need 
to  be  much  of  a  song  at  that.  Each  of  the  partners 
was  to  put  up  $200  cash  on  a  certain  day,  to  be  used 
in  paying  for  equities  which  the  captain  was  to  try  to 
dispose  of  in  the  East.  Just  what  there  was  about  the 
kind  of  money  the  storekeeper  put  up  for  his  share  that 
convinced  Captain  Bob  of  his  guilt  I  do  not  know, 
possibly  the  size  of  the  bills  or  the  name  of  the  national 
bank  that  had  issued  them,  but  in  any  event  he  wired 
the  general  manager  of  the  express  company  that  he 
had  the  thief  located  and  to  come  and  get  him. 


STRIKING  PERSONALITIES  253 

When  they  went  out  to  make  the  arrest  the  man 
vehemently  denied  all  knowledge  of  the  crime,  but  on 
searching  him  they  found  a  leather  pocket  book  in  his 
coat  in  which  there  were  two  $100  bills.  A  search  of 
the  house  revealed  nothing  until  Captain  Bob  insisted 
on  investigating  a  stand  which  he  found  had  a  hollow 
leg,  in  which  was  concealed  over  $6,000  in  bills.  Fifty- 
two  of  these  were  $100  bills,  the  rest  were  bills  of 
smaller  denominations.  Confronted  with  the  evidence 
of  his  guilt  the  man  broke  down,  confessed  his  guilt, 
and  went  back  to  Ohio  to  serve  his  sentence  in  the 
penitentiary.  When  the  confession  was  made  the  man 
expressed  his  satisfaction.  He  had  for  years  been 
carrying  a  load  of  fear  and  remorse.  The  money  had 
done  him  no  good,  because  he  was  afraid  to  spend  it. 
It  was  apparently  the  one  crime  of  his  life  and  he  had 
bitterly  regretted  it.  A  remarkable  part  of  the  story 
is  that  somehow  the  knowledge  of  their  father's  crime 
was  kept  from  his  children.  They  were  given  to  un- 
derstand that  he  had  been  called  away  on  some  kind 
of  business  that  kept  him  from  home  a  long  time.  He 
was  a  model  prisoner,  served  his  sentence,  and  returned 
to  his  family  to  lead  thereafter  a  law-abiding  and  quiet 
life. 


KANSAS  GROWING  UP 

The  Coming  Back  of  Denver  Boggs 

I  DO  not  know  just  when  the  elder  Boggs,  yielding 
to  the  lure  of  the  West,  loaded  his  young  wife  and 
possibly  a  child  or  two  into  a  wagon  and  trekked 
across  the  far  reaches  of  gently  rolling  prairie  land 
that  lay  between  the  Missouri  River  and  the  foothills 
of  the  Rockies.  At  any  rate  it  was  before  the  present 
capital  of  the  great  state  of  Colorado  had  been  laid 
out  in  that  great  cup  in  the  mountains  and  men  were 
sluicing  the  sands  of  Cherry  Creek  for  gold. 

Here  on  the  site  of  the  future  city,  the  Boggs  family 
located  and  here  a  year  or  so  afterward  a  boy  was 
born,  the  first  white  baby  born  on  the  townsite.  In 
honor  of  the  event  his  parents  named  him  Denver. 

The  man  born  amid  the  glory  and  grandeur  of  the 
mountains  does  not  often  stray  to  the  plains  and  for 
that  reason  it  was  somewhat  remarkable  that  when 
Denver  Boggs  had  reached  years  of  maturity  he  came 
back  and  settled  in  Kansas.  I  first  met  him  in  the 
Medicine  country,  a  mild,  good  natured,  quiet  man, 
who  had  managed  to  accumulate  a  wife  and  numerous 
children  and  very  little  else.  He  and  his  wife  were 
uncomplaining  souls  and  seemed  to  be  reasonably  cheer- 
ful, although  there  must  have  been  times  when  there 
was  little  on  the  table  and  no  reserve  in  the  larder. 

Denver  had  managed  somehow  to  acquire  a  fair  edu- 
cation. His  speech  was  unusually  accurate  and  un- 
seasoned with  profanity,  which  I  may  say  in  passing 

254 


KANSAS  GROWING  UP  255 

was  somewhat  rare  among  the  men  of  that  locality  at 
that  time.  I  do  not  think  he  drank  or  used  tobacco  and 
so  far  as  speech  and  general  conduct  were  concerned  he 
was  really  a  model  citizen.  He  worked  at  such  jobs 
as  offered,  sometimes  riding  the  range  and  sometimes 
working  about  the  little  frontier  town,  doing  odd  jobs. 
Occasionally  he  canvassed  for  subscribers  for  the  local 
paper  after  it  was  started  and  sometimes  furnished 
a  column  of  country  correspondence,  for  he  had  some 
facility  as  a  writer. 

The  only  criticism  I  ever  heard  of  him  was  that  he 
lacked  force  and  ambition.  He  seemed  to  have  a  fair 
equipment  of  brains,  but  apparently  was  content  to  live 
a  hand-to-mouth  existence,  letting  the  morrow  take  care 
of  itself. 

It  was,  therefore,  with  some  surprise  that  along  in 
the  later  nineties  I  heard  that  Denver  Boggs  had  blos- 
somed out  as  a  cattleman  and  according  to  report  was 
succeeding.  It  was  in  the  time  when  there  was  a  great 
boom  in  the  cattle  business,  especially  in  the  business 
of  raising  cattle  on  the  range.  The  long  depression  in 
prices  of  beef  cattle  was  succeeded  by  a  brisk  demand 
and  constantly  rising  prices.  Money  to  invest  in  cattle 
was  easy  to  obtain.  Commission  firms  seemed  willing 
to  stake  almost  any  man  who  was  ready  to  promise 
them  big  dividends  on  their  investment.  As  a  result  of 
this  condition  there  was  witnessed  the  astounding  and 
most  spectacular  career  of  Grant  Gillette,  known  for  a 
time  as  the  "cowboy  cattle  king."  Starting  with  no 
capital,  in  an  amazingly  short  while  he  had  managed  to 
borrow  more  than  $2,000,000  and  had  herds  scattered 
from  the  Red  River  in  Texas  to  the  Nebraska  line. 
At  one  time  he  traveled  about  accompanied  by  his 
famous  cowboy  band,  numbering  perhaps  twenty-five 
or  thirty  musicians  who  did  nothing  but  furnish  en- 
tertainment and  advertise  their  employer. 


256  WHEN  KANSAS  WAS  YOUNG 

But  the  rise  and  fall  of  Grant  Gillette  is  enough  ma- 
terial for  another  story. 

Denver  Boggs  was  not  so  spectacular,  but  something 
had  stirred  his  ambition;  opportunity  was  at  his  door 
and  he  mounted  and  rode.  Most  men  and  women  like 
to  live  up  to  their  reputation.  With  seeming  pros- 
perity, Denver  Boggs  and  family  were  no  longer  con- 
tent with  the  old  simplicity  of  dress  and  economy  of 
household  management.  There  was  a  temptation  to  live 
beyond  his  means  and  to  it  Denver  yielded.  He  sold 
the  cattle  or  part  of  them  which  were  mortgaged  to 
secure  his  indebtedness.  Perhaps  if  he  had  frankly 
stated  the  case  to  his  creditors,  he  might  have  made 
arrangements  to  pay  out  when  he  could,  but  he  made 
the  fatal  mistake  of  concealment  until  he  could  see  no 
way  out  and  the  doors  of  the  penitentiary  opening 
before  him.  Then  he  fled.  It  was  a  good  many  months 
before  any  news  came  from  the  fugitive. 

He  made  his  way  to  Cuba ;  then  across  the  gulf  to 
Mexico.  All  the  time  his  conscience  was  goading  him 
and  he  was  weighed  down  by  an  almost  intolerable 
burden  of  homesickness  and  longing  to  get  back  and 
have  it  all  over  with.  Denver  Boggs  was  not  a  criminal 
at  heart ;  he  was  in  fact  a  kindly  man  who  had  yielded 
to  temptation  and  was  paying  a  fearful  penalty.  The 
day  came  when  he  could  stand  the  strain  no  longer  and 
crossing  the  bridge  which  separates  El  Paso  from  the 
old  Mexican  town  of  Juarez,  he  hunted  up  the  Texas 
sheriff  and  told  him  that  he  was  wanted  up  in  Kansas 
and  had  come  in  to  surrender.  The  sheriff  was  some- 
what surprised  and  after  looking  through  all  of  his  lists 
of  men  wanted  could  find  no  mention  of  a  man  by  the 
name  or  fitting  the  description  of  Denver  Boggs.  But 
the  man  was  insistent  and  so  the  sheriff  to  accommodate 
him  wired  the  Kansas  authorities  that  he  had  a  man 
there  who  insisted  that  he  had  committed  a  crime  and 


KANSAS  GROWING  UP  257 

wanted  to  go  to  the  penitentiary.  The  Kansas  sheriff 
wired  that  the  story  of  the  wanderer  was  true;  and 
so  without  guard  and  gladly,  Denver  came  back  to 
Kansas  and  surrendered  himself  to  the  officers  of  the 
law.  All  he  asked  was  to  have  the  matter  over  with 
as  soon  as  possible  so  that  he  might  begin  serving 
his  sentence,  with  the  hope  when  he  had  paid  the  penalty 
he  might  be  given  a  chance  to  reinstate  himself  in  the 
opinion  of  his  old  neighbors. 

The  court  heard  the  story  and  declaring  that  in  his 
opinion  Denver  had  already  been  punished  sufficiently 
for  his  fault,  gave  him  the  lowest  sentence  permissible 
under  the  law,  one  year  in  the  penitentiary.  That  was 
in  the  days  before  the  indeterminate  sentence  or  the 
power  of  the  judge  to  grant  a  parole.  In  the  peni- 
tentiary he  was  a  model  prisoner  and  was  given  all 
the  good  time  possible  on  a  sentence  of  that  duration. 
At  the  end  of  the  eleventh  month  Denver  Boggs  stepped 
forth  a  free  man. 

During  his  wanderings  he  had  traveled  through  the 
then  territory  of  Arizona  and  perhaps  by  reason  of 
the  environment  of  his  boyhood,  was  something  of  a 
mineralogist.  As  he  traveled  he  observed  and  marked 
the  location  of  rich  copper  deposits.  When  he  had  fin- 
ished his  term  in  the  penitentiary  he  went  back  to 
Arizona  and  found  that  the  properties  he  had  noted 
were  still  open  to  entry.  He  located  a  number  of 
claims  and  then  got  in  touch  with  some  men  of  means 
who  were  looking  for  mining  investments. 

Denver  Boggs  was  not  a  success  as  a  cattle  man  but 
he  was  a  pleasing  conversationalist  and  persuaded  these 
capitalists  to  send  their  hired  experts  to  look  at  his 
claims. 

As  a  result  he  sold  them  an  interest  for  $125,000 
cash. 

Let  it  be  said  to  his  credit  that  one  of  his  first  acts 


258  WHEN  KANSAS  WAS  YOUNG 

was  to  square  up  with  his  creditors,  who  had  long 
before  marked  off  the  Boggs  cattle  account  as  uncol- 
lectible. 

It  has  been  a  good  many  years  since  I  last  heard 
from  Denver  Boggs.  I  have  always  regarded  his  case 
as  a  remarkable  instance  of  a  man  coming  back  out  of 
the  depths  and  beginning  his  real  success  in  life  after 
serving  a  term  in  the  penitentiary.  I  hope  that  suc- 
cess has  followed  him,  because,  notwithstanding  his  one 
grave  mistake,  he  was  a  good  man. 


When  Bitt  Backslid 

Among  the  cowboys  who  ranged  from  Dodge  City  to 
the  Panhandle  of  Texas  was  one  whose  baptismal  name 
as  I  recall  was  William  Patrick  Hogan.  But  on  ac- 
count of  an  adventure  he  had  had  with  a  prairie  rat- 
tler, which,  according  to  William  and  his  contempo- 
raries, would  have  resulted  in  his  premature  demise  if 
it  had  not  been  for  the  prompt  administration  of 
snakebite  remedy  in  copious  quantities,  he  was  generally 
known  on  the  range  as  "Rattlesnake  Bill." 

If  the  modern  descriptive  adjective,  "hard  boiled," 
had  been  invented  at  that  time,  it  would  have  fitted 
"Rattlesnake  Bill"  to  a  dot.  When  he  was  "lit  up," 
as  the  slangful  phrase  had  it,  he  was  something  of  a 
holy  terror,  and  even  when  sober  was  not  particularly 
averse  to  trouble,  either  with  gun  or  fist  or  quirt,  al- 
though it  should  be  said  to  his  credit  that  he  never 
craved  the  reputation  of  being  a  "gunman."  His  natu- 
ral inclination,  after  the  manner  of  his  race,  was  to 
settle  arguments  with  the  two  hands  furnished  by  na- 
ture, and  if  he  had  lived  in  the  land  and  time  of  his 
forebears  he  would  have  been  a  leader  with  the  black- 
thorn and  engaged  joyously  in  breaking  the  heads  of 


KANSAS  GROWING  UP  259 

his  opponents.  It  must  be  confessed  here  that  religion 
did  not  have  much  of  a  foothold  on  the  range.  A 
preacher  was  likely  to  be  looked  upon  by  the  herders 
as  rather  an  effeminate  individual,  who  might  do  all 
right  to  talk  to  women's  aid  societies,  but  who  lacked 
the  virility  admired  by  the  men  who  rode  through  the 
silent  watches  of  the  night,  or  at  breakneck  speed 
through  the  storm  with  the  stampeded  herd,  risking 
death  every  moment.  It  was,  therefore,  an  amazing 
thing  when  "Rattlesnake  Bill"  happened  to  come  under 
the  spell  of  a  traveling  evangelist  and  became  a  humble 
suppliant  at  the  mercy  seat. 

And  it  should  be  said  for  Bill  that  he  took  his 
religion  seriously.  He  felt  that  he  ought  to  do  some- 
thing to  make  up  for  the  years  he  had  wasted  in  the 
service  of  Satan  while  ambling  down  the  broad  road 
which  led  to  destruction.  It  occurred  to  him  that  he 
might  and  should  become  a  living  example  of  the  power 
of  grace,  and  show  to  the  unregenerate  cowboys  that 
he  could  demonstrate  the  long  suffering  patience  of 
the  Nazarene. 

The  other  herders  were,  therefore,  considerably  sur- 
prised when  they  learned  that  "Rattlesnake  Bill"  had 
not  only  got  religion,  but  that  on  a  certain  evening  he 
proposed  to  make  a  talk  to  his  unregenerate  fellow 
cowpunchers  and  show  them  that  he  had  so  completely 
changed  that  they  could  heap  upon  him  any  indignity 
without  causing  anger  or  resentment  on  his  part.  The 
herders  discussed  the  matter  among  themselves  with 
varying  opinions.  Some  of  them  said  that  they  be- 
lieved Bill  was  really  in  earnest,  while  others  con- 
tended that  he  must  have  been  eating  loco  and  had  bats 
in  his  garret  as  a  result.  It  was  generally  conceded, 
however,  that  it  would  be  a  good  idea  to  go  and  hear 
what  Bill  had  to  say  and  likewise  to  give  him  a  tryout. 
So  it  happened  that  there  was  a  rather  large  and  in- 


260  WHEN  KANSAS  WAS  YOUNG 

terested  crowd  present  on  the  evening  when  the  new 
convert  proposed  to  give  an  exhibition  of  the  genuine- 
ness of  his  conversion. 

His  opening  statement  was  somewhat  crude  but  easily 
understood.  In  substance  he  said :  "You  range  riders 
and  mule  skinners  hev  knowed  me  for  several  years. 
You  all  know  that  I  never  took  no  stock  in  no  kind  of 
religion  and  if  there  was  any  kind  of  general  ornery- 
ness  that  I  hain't  indulged  in  I  can't  call  it  to  mind, 
and  at  that  I  ain't  no  worse  than  a  lot  of  you  geezers. 
What  I'm  aimin*  at  is  to  show  you  birds  that  a  man 
who  is  genuinely  converted  can  stand  the  gaff  and  not 
let  his  temper  rise.  Now  I  propose  to  demonstrate  to 
you  unregenerate  cusses  that  you  can  heap  any  sort 
of  insults  and  abuse  on  me  and  I  won't  resent  it.  Go 
to  it." 

They  took  him  at  his  word.  Some  of  them,  indeed, 
had  come  prepared  to  make  it  interesting  for  Bill  if  he 
really  meant  it.  "Arkansas  Pete,"  who  had  suffered  at 
the  hands  of  "Rattlesnake  Bill"  in  a  fistic  argument, 
saw  an. opportunity  to  play  even  and  landed  a  kick  on 
Bill's  person  that  almost  made  his  teeth  rattle.  For 
an  instant  there  was  a  dangerous  expression  on  Bill's 
countenance,  but  he  made  no  attempt  to  resent  the 
indignity.  "Texas  Sam"  took  from  his  cheek  a  well- 
chewed  quid  of  longgreen  tobacco  and  snapped  it 
against  the  bronzed  cheek  of  the  amateur  evangelist 
and  demonstrator  of  Christian  forbearance.  "Sour 
Dough  Jake,"  the  cook,  who  had  been  the  butt  of  a  good 
many  jibes  from  Bill  in  his  unregenerate  days,  plastered 
his  head  with  a  batch  of  spoiled  dough,  and  "Bitter 
Creek  Slim"  tried  him  out  with  a  vigorous  application 
of  the  quirt  on  an  unprotected  part  of  his  person. 
"Rattlesnake  Bill"  winced  a  trifle  under  the  punishment, 
but  made  no  complaint  and  gave  no  indication  of  anger. 
It  was  at  this  point  that  Ike  Timberlake,  from  the 


KANSAS  GROWING  UP  261 

Brazos  country,  commonly  known  on  the  ranges  as 
"Alkali  Ike,"  took  from  his  side  pocket  a  turkey  egg  in 
an  advanced  state  of  decomposition  and,  with  well- 
directed  aim,  hurled  it  at  Bill's  head.  The  new  convert 
was  just  opening  his  mouth  to  assure  the  audience  he 
was  unmoved  by  their  treatment,  when  the  wild  turkey 
egg  of  advanced  age  and  powerful  vintage  hit  him  fair 
and  square  in  the  face.  It  broke  with  a  loud  sound 
and  a  considerable  part  of  the  contents  of  the  shell 
went  between  his  teeth.  He  gagged,  spat  out  the  putrid 
egg  with  great  promptness  and  considerable  violence, 
wiped  the  loud  smelling  mess  from  his  countenance,  and 
then  made  the  following  announcement,  as  he  shed  his 
coat  preparatory  to  going  into  action :  "Gents,  I  don't 
intend  to  give  up  permanently  this  here  Christian  life, 
but  there  will  be  an  adjournment  for  fifteen  minutes 
of  this  here  exhibition  of  long-sufferin*  meekness  and 
patience  while  I  whip  the  low-down,  measly,  sheep- 
stealin'  son  of  a  coyote  who  throwed  that  turkey  egg." 
Those  who  witnessed  the  fight  declared  that  "Rattle- 
snake Bill"  was  never  in  better  form,  and  when  the  bat- 
tle ended,  "Alkali  Ike"  was  a  wreck,  while  "Arkansas 
Pete,"  "Texas  Sam,"  "Sour  Dough  Jake"  and  "Bitter 
Creek  Slim"  had  fled  from  the  wrath  to  come. 


The  Rise  and  Fall  of  Grant  Gillette 

About  thirty  years  ago  a  young  telegraph  operator 
out  in  Marion  County  was  accused  of  putting  up  a  job 
to  defraud  the  railroad  company,  which  seems  so  simple 
in  its  conception  that  one  marvels  that  it  should  have 
worked,  even  for  a  limited  period.  The  scheme  was  to 
put  a  few  bushels  of  grain  in  a  freight  car,  bill  it  out 
as  a  full  car  and  collect  from  the  railroad  company 
on  the  basis  of  the  full  car-load. 


262  WHEN  KANSAS  WAS  YOUNG 

Naturally,  as  might  be  supposed,  the  young  man  got 
into  trouble  and  left  that  section  of  the  country  for  a 
year  or  two.  He  seems  to  have  been  able  to  satisfy  the 
railroad  company  in  some  way,  however,  and  was  never 
prosecuted. 

It  was  a  year  or  two  after  that,  that  this  same 
young  man  sought  the  job  of  deputy  sheriff  in  Dickin- 
son County.  The  emoluments  of  this  office  at  that 
time  amounted  to  some  fifty  dollars  per  month.  He 
did  not  get  the  job. 

Possibly  the  necessity  for  making  a  living  suggested 
to  him  that  there  ought  to  be  some  shorter  road  to 
fortune  than  working  as  an  underling  at  the  modest 
stipend  of  fifty  per  month.  At  any  rate,  there  seemed 
to  be  a  change  come  over  the  spirit  of  his  dreams.  He 
evidently  decided  that  the  world  was  his  oyster  and 
he  proposed  to  open  it. 

The  young  man  was  Grant  Gillette,  of  Woodbine, 
who  within  the  next  four  or  five  years  furnished  the 
most  spectacular  example  of  frenzied  finance  ever  seen 
in  the  Middle  West. 

Within  these  few  brief  years  this  young  man,  still 
under  thirty  years  of  age,  with  little  business  experi- 
ence and  only  local  acquaintance,  bought  herds  of  cat- 
tle from  Texas  to  the  Canadian  line,  and  from  the 
Pacific  coast  to  the  Missouri  River,  all  on  borrowed 
money,  advanced  by  experienced  bankers  and  commis- 
sion men,  and  even  by  the  great  leader  of  the  packing 
industry,  Philip  D.  Armour. 

When  the  crash  finally  came  his  indebtedness  had 
mounted  to  the  dizzy  height  of  $2,000,000,  or  some- 
where in  that  neighborhood.  The  men  who  had  ad- 
vanced the  money  were  holding  chattel  mortgages  on 
herds,  as  they  supposed,  aggregating  60,000  cattle, 
of  all  grades  from  long  horned  Texans,  to  the  highest 
grade  Herefords.  His  methods  were  bizarre  and,  it 


KANSAS  GROWING  UP  263 

would  have  seemed,  not  calculated  to  appeal  to  a  care- 
ful, hard-headed  business  man,  but  the  astonishing  fact 
was  that  somehow  he  did  appeal  to  them,  so  that  they 
advanced  large  sums  of  money  on  his  unsupported 
promise  and  even  seemed  eager  to  do  it.  On  one  occa- 
sion he  stepped  into  a  commission  house  in  St.  Joseph 
and  nonchalantly  asked  the  broker  to  cash  his  check 
for  $10,000,  saying  that  he  would  have  a  few  car- 
loads of  cattle  on  the  market  within  a  week  and  would 
then  settle.  The  commission  house  promptly  cashed 
the  check  which  they  were  still  holding  after  the  crash 
came. 

Possibly  there  was  an  element  of  greed  in  the  case, 
for  Gillette  promised  his  backers  large  profits  on  their 
investments.  It  is  probable  also  that  his  breezy  con- 
fidence impressed  these  men,  for  in  the  heyday  of  his 
career  Grant  Gillette  was  the  personification  of  con- 
fidence in  his  own  ability.  True,  there  was  much  of  the 
grand  stand  in  his  methods.  He  hired  and  uniformed 
a  large  band,  known  all  over  the  country  as  Gillette's 
cowboy  band.  This  band  he  carried  about  on  special 
trains  to  cattle  conventions  and  other  gatherings.  He 
rejoiced  in  the  title  of  the  cattle  king  of  Kansas.  His 
shirt  front  and  fingers  were  decorated  with  large  and 
glittering  diamonds  and  he  had  a  peculiar  habit  of 
carrying  a  handful  of  diamonds  in  his  pocket  which 
he  would  carelessly  jingle  in  his  hand  when  engaged 
in  conversation. 

He  cherished  political  ambitions  and  was  talked  of 
as  a  candidate  for  the  Legislature  and  even  Congress. 

The  crash  came  in  1898  when  some  bank  or  commis- 
sion house  began  to  get  uneasy  about  its  paper,  and 
then  it  developed  that  Gillette's  creditors  did  not  know 
within  $1,000,000  how  much  money  had  been  advanced 
to  the  young  Napoleon  of  finance. 

On  November  27,  1898,  the  following  telegram  was 


264  WHEN  KANSAS  WAS  YOUNG 

received  at  Woodbine,  "Will  leave  today  for  Spain. 
Cable  me  at  Cadiz,  how  are  my  wife  and  baby."  How- 
ever, he  was  not  sailing  for  Spain  but  was  heading 
for  old  Mexico. 

It  was  three  years  afterward  that  a  Kansan  re- 
turning from  Mexico  brought  the  news  that  he  had  met 
Grant  Gillette  in  the  city  of  Chihuahua,  where  he  was 
living  in  a  state  of  poverty.  His  baby  had  died.  His 
wife  had  been  taken  down  with  the  smallpox  and  Grant 
himself  had  nearly  died  from  accidental  poisoning.  He 
had  been  running  a  dairy,  but  had  lost  that  when  sick- 
ness came  on,  and  was  then  earning  a  somewhat  precari- 
ous living  by  making  and  selling  shirtwaists  to  the  Mexi- 
can maidens.  However,  Gillette  was  not  the  kind  of 
a  man  to  get  discouraged  by  fickle  fortune.  Five  years 
after  he  had  disappeared,  leaving  his  creditors  to  gather 
up  what  they  could,  he  returned  to  the  United  States. 

He  called  some  of  his  creditors  and  informed  them 
that  he  had  procured  a  large  interest  in  a  valuable 
mine  and  wanted  them  to  take  stock  in  the  same  to 
the  extent  at  least  of  his  obligations  to  them,  and  per- 
haps some  more  to  finance  the  proposition.  How  many 
of  them  took  stock  I  do  not  know,  but  at  any  rate  all 
talk  of  prosecution  of  the  erstwhile  cattle  king  was 
dropped  and  my  last  word  concerning  his  whereabouts 
was  that  he  was  living  quietly  near  Fostoria,  Ohio, 
was  accumulating  land,  and  was  on  the  road  to  for- 
tune. 

Having  seen  and  having  tried  to  study  the  character 
of  Grant  Gillette,  I  have  often  wondered  how  he  was 
able  to  go  as  far  as  he  did.  I  have  often  wondered 
how  a  man  like  .him  could  so  impress  a  man  like  P.  D. 
Armour,  who  had  the  reputation  of  being  an  excellent 
judge  of  human  nature,  that  he  would  back  the  specu- 
lations of  the  young  adventurer  to  the  extent  of  thou- 
sands of  dollars. 


KANSAS  GROWING  UP  265 

Possibly  the  explanation  may  be  that  of  the  western 
man  who  loved  to  sit  in  a  poker  game,  who  declared 
that  a  bob-tailed  flush  was  just  as  good  as  the  real 
thing  if  you  only  had  the  nerve  to  bet  it  high  enough, 
and  at  the  same  time  look  as  if  you  really  held  the 
cards. 

Convicted  under  His  Own  Law 

One  of  the  members  of  the  first  Oklahoma  territorial 
legislature  was  Ira  N.  Terrill,  who  had  gone  into  the 
new  territory  with  the  first  spectacular  run  and  driven 
his  stake  in  a  choice  quarter  section  of  virgin  Okla- 
homa land.  If  it  had  not  been  for  the  fact  that  an- 
other man  also  decided  that  he  wanted  this  particular 
quarter  section  of  land  this  story  would  never  have 
been  written,  with  its  intermingling  of  comedy  and 
tragedy.  As  a  legislator  Terrill  determined  to  leave 
his  impress  on  the  laws  of  the  new  territory  and  future 
commonwealth.  He  introduced  and  successfully  urged 
for  passage  a  law  providing  for  capital  punishment  by 
hanging  for  first  degree  murder,  treason,  and  possibly 
some  other  offenses. 

The  session  had  not  much  more  than  adjourned, 
however,  when  the  quarrel  between  Terrill  and  the  man 
who  was  contesting  his  right  to  the  claim,  culminated 
in  a  shooting.  Perhaps  Terrill  took  the  advantage; 
perhaps  he  was  simply  the  better  marksman,  or  maybe 
he  got  his  gun  out  first.  Anyway,  the  other  man  was 
dead  and  Ira  N.  Terrill  was  arrested  charged  with  mur- 
der. It  seemed  a  queer  irony  of  fate  that  he  was  the  first 
man  charged  with  murder  and  tried  under  the  provisions 
of  the  bill  he  had  introduced  and  caused  to  become  a 
law.  He  was  convicted  of  murder  in  the  second  degree 
on  September  26,  1892,  and  as  the  territory  of  Okla- 
homa had  no  penitentiary,  he  was  sent  to  the  Kansas 


266  WHEN  KANSAS  WAS  YOUNG 

penitentiary  under  an  arrangement  made  with  the  Kan- 
sas governor  and  warden,  by  which  the  state  was  paid 
so  much  per  prisoner  by  the  territory. 

Terrill  had  made  some  study  of  law  before  his  con- 
viction and  was  a  zealous  student  of  jurisprudence  dur- 
ing the  period  of  his  incarceration.  Acting  as  his  own 
lawyer,  he  brought  a  habeas  corpus  proceeding  in  the 
supreme  court  of  Kansas,  demanding  his  release  on 
the  ground  that  the  court  which  convicted  him  in 
Payne  County,  Oklahoma,  was  without  jurisdiction, 
because  the  term  of  court  had  lapsed  by  the  failure  of 
the  judge  to  put  in  an  appearance  within  the  time 
fixed  by  statute.  The  supreme  court  held  that  he  was 
right  in  his  contention,  granted  the  writ,  and  ordered 
him  released  from  the  penitentiary,  but  did  not  dis- 
charge him  entirely.  He  was  ordered  to  be  delivered 
to  the  sheriff  of  Payne  County  for  such  further  pro- 
ceedings as  the  prosecuting  officer  of  that  county  might 
desire.  The  result  was  a  new  indictment,  a  new  trial, 
and  another  conviction,  but  this  time  for  first  degree 
manslaughter.  He  was  then  sentenced  to  twelve  years 
in  the  penitentiary  and  again  lodged  in  the  Kansas 
penitentiary. 

Again  Terrill  applied  for  a  writ  of  habeas  corpus  on 
the  ground  that  the  killing  for  which  he  had  been  tried 
and  convicted  had  taken  place  on  a  government  reserva- 
tion (the  shooting  occurred  in  Guthrie  on  the  govern- 
ment acre  reserved  for  the  United  States  land  office). 
The  supreme  court  this  time  ruled  against  Terrill,  hold- 
ing that  the  question  as  to  where  the  killing  had  taken 
place  was  one  of  fact  and  if  an  error  of  jurisdiction 
had  occurred  it  could  only  be  taken  advantage  of  on 
appeal. 

Having  failed  on  this  Terrill  proceeded  on  a  new 
theory,  that  no  authority  existed  for  holding  in  Kan- 
sas a  man  whose  liberty  was  restrained  by  an  Oklahoma 


KANSAS  GROWING  UP  267 

court  and  that  there  was  no  law  in  Kansas  which  justi- 
fied or  attempted  to  justify  such  detention.  Acting 
on  this  theory,  all  the  time  he  was  in  the  penitentiary 
he  was  in  a  state  of  chronic  insurrection,  refusing  to 
work  and  even  resisting  the  officer  when  that  gentleman 
undertook  to  compel  him  to  toil. 

In  the  early  part  of  1903  he  again  succeeded  in  get- 
ting the  attention  of  the  supreme  court  with  another 
application  for  a  writ  of  habeas  corpus,  based  on  the 
ground  above  stated.  The  court  refused  to  grant  the 
writ  on  the  ground  that  the  state  of  Kansas  by  per- 
mitting the  warden  of  the  penitentiary  to  enter  into 
this  contract  with  the  territory  of  Oklahoma  to  care 
for  the  convicts  had  recognized  the  validity  of  the 
contract  although  it  was  not  authorized  by  any  act 
of  the  legislature.  Two  members  of  the  court  dis- 
sented from  this  decision.  This  ended  the  incursions 
of  Terrill  into  the  courts  and  he  sullenly  served  out 
the  rest  of  his  term. 

At  the  time  of  his  third  application  for  a  writ  of 
habeas  corpus,  I  had  written  a  story  about  him  in 
which  I  stated  that  he  was  the  first  victim  of  his  own 
law  and  that  he  had  been  convicted  of  murder  in  the 
first  degree  and  sentenced  to  be  hanged.  This  was  a 
mistake  on  my  part,  but  was  innocently  made  and  then 
it  furnished  the  material  for  a  better  human  interest 
story. 

A  short  time  after  he  had  obtained  his  liberty  I  was 
surprised  to  receive  a  visit  from  the  noted  ex-convict, 
who  had  somehow  obtained  a  paper  containing  the  story 
I  had  written.  He  had  this  with  him  and  proceeded 
without  much  preliminary  statement  to  inform  me  that 
I  had  libeled  him  and  that  his  reputation  and  feelings 
were  lacerated  to  the  extent  that  it  would  require 
$10,000  to  heal  the  wounds.  In  support  of  his  demand, 
he  called  attention  to  the  fact  that  he  had  not  been 


268  WHEN  KANSAS  WAS  YOUNG 

convicted  of  first  degree  murder  or  sentenced  to  be 
hanged. 

I  countered  first  by  deploring  the  fact  that  I  lacked 
something  like  $9,998.50  of  having  the  $10,000  about 
my  person,  then  proceeded  to  argue  that,  granting 
what  he  said  to  be  true  about  the  convictions  in  court, 
he  really  had  no  ground  for  complaint;  that  having 
been  twice  sentenced  to  imprisonment,  once  for  life  and 
once  for  twelve  years,  the  sum  total  was  really  worse 
than  only  being  sentenced  to  hang  once.  I  argued  with 
considerable  earnestness  that  to  be  sentenced  to  serve 
at  hard  labor  in  the  penitentiary  after  a  man  was  dead 
was  a  punishment  more  to  be  dreaded  than  the  brief 
inconvenience  of  hanging,  which  would  be  over  with  in 
less  than  sixty  seconds.  I  also  urged  that  to  have  been 
sentenced  to  be  hung  gave  him  a  prominence  he  never 
could  achieve  by  mere  confinement  in  the  penitentiary. 
Not  many  men  have  been  sentenced  to  be  hung  and 
escaped,  but  millions  of  men  have  spent  more  or  less 
of  their  lives  in  penitentiaries. 

I  must  say,  however,  he  did  not  seem  to  be  much 
impressed  with  my  argument  and  insisted  that  it  was 
either  a  financial  settlement  or  a  suit  for  libel.  He 
also  included  Senator  Capper  in  his  suit  and  made  the 
same  demand  on  him,  but  Mr.  Capper  mildly  but  rather 
firmly  declined  to  dig  up  and  the  suit  was  brought.  As 
this  was  the  only  time  that  any  one  ever  considered 
it  worth  while  to  make  me  a  defendant  in  a  $10,000 
libel  suit  I  was  somewhat  puffed  up  about  it  and  in- 
terested in  the  outcome. 

The  case  came  on  to  be  heard  before  the  late  Judge 
A.  W.  Dana.  The  defendants  were  represented  by  ex- 
Lieutenant  Governor  Troutman,  while  Ira  N.  Terrill 
was  his  own  lawyer.  When  the  jury  had  been  duly  im- 
paneled and  sworn,  there  commenced  perhaps  the  most 
peculiar  trial  ever  seen  in  a  Kansas  court. 


KANSAS  GROWING  UP  269 

Terrill  acted  in  a  double  capacity  of  lawyer  and 
witness  and  with  meticulous  care  maintained  the  dis- 
tinction between  attorney  and  client  and  attorney  and 
witness.  He  announced  to  the  court  in  an  apparently 
wholly  impersonal  way:  "Ira  N.  Terrill  will  now  be 
sworn." 

"Mr.  Terrill  will  take  the  witness  stand." 

He  then  gravely  asked,  "Please  state  your  name,  age, 
and  residence  to  the  court  and  jury." 

Having  asked  the  question,  he  stepped  up  on  the 
little  platform,  seated  himself  in  the  witness  chair,  and 
proceeded  to  answer  the  questions.  He  then  stepped 
down  and,  again  assuming  the  role  of  attorney,  asked, 
"Are  you  the  plaintiff  in  this  case?"  then  took  the  wit- 
ness chair  and  answered  the  question. 

"Have  you,  Mr.  Terrill,  in  your  possession  a  copy 

of  the  Farmers9  Mail  and  Breeze  of date  owned 

by  one  of  these  defendants  and  edited  by  the  other?" 

Again  seating  himself  as  a  witness  he  answered,  "I 
have." 

Then  assuming  again  the  position  of  attorney  for  the 
plaintiff  he  announced,  "We  now  wish  to  introduce  this 
paper  containing  the  libelous  article,  in  evidence  and 
mark  it  'Exhibit  A.'  " 

This  proceeded  through  the  trial  of  the  case,  the 
prosecutor  alternating  between  the  witness  stand  and 
the  floor.  The  judge  with  great  dignity  and  self- 
restraint  preserved  decorum  in  the  court,  although  one 
fat  juryman,  in  his  efforts  at  self-repression,  showed 
evidences  of  pain  and  indications  of  apoplexy. 

I  may  say  in  conclusion  that  the  jury  very  kindly 
refused  to  find  for  the  plaintiff,  which  relieved  both 
Mr.  Capper  and  the  writer  from  financial  loss  and  as 
Terrill  had  filed,  as  I  recall,  a  poverty  affidavit  when  he 
started  the  suit  and  as  his  only  witness  was  himself 
it  was  inexpensive,  if  fruitless,  legal  action. 


270  WHEN  KANSAS  WAS  YOUNG 

What  has  become  of  this  picturesque  and  peculiar 
character  I  do  not  know.  For  a  few  years  after  his 
release  from  the  penitentiary  I  heard  occasionally  of 
his  bringing  suits  for  damages  against  various  officials 
in  Oklahoma  and  Kansas,  but  think  they  all  ended  about 
as  did  the  one  described.  So  far  as  I  know,  however, 
he  holds  the  record  for  at  least  two  things:  he  is  the 
only  man  in  the  United  States  convicted  of  a  capital 
offense  under  a  criminal  statute  of  which  he  was  the 
author  and  also  the  only  man  who,  while  in  the  peni- 
tentiary, acting  as  his  own  lawyer,  brought  three 
habeas  corpus  proceedings  before  the  supreme  court  of 
a  state. 

The  Last  Raid  of  the  Daltons 

One  day  in  the  late  summer  of  the  year  1907  I  was 
taking  a  plain  and  not  very  satisfactory  meal  in  a 
Topeka  restaurant  when  there  came  in  and  sat  down  at 
the  table  with  me  a  tall,  well  built,  and  rather  strikingly 
handsome  man.  His  face  had  that  peculiar  pallor  that 
comes  from  long  confinement  within  prison  walls  and 
I  noticed  that  he  seemed  to  have  little  use  of  one  of 
his  arms.  A  well  known  Topeka  physician  accompanied 
him  and  introduced  him  as  Emmett  Dalton,  the  only 
survivor  of  one  of  the  bloodiest  bandit  battles  that  ever 
took  place  on  the  Kansas  border. 

For  fifteen  years  Emmett  Dalton  had  been  an  in- 
mate of  the  Kansas  penitentiary  under  sentence  of 
death,  for  in  those  days  Kansas  had  a  peculiar  law 
under  which  a  man  might  be  convicted  of  murder  in 
the  first  degree,  in  which  case  it  became  the  duty  of 
the  judge  presiding  at  the  trial  to  sentence  him  to  be 
hanged  by  the  neck  until  dead,  but  with  the  proviso 
that  the  sentence  of  death  should  not  be  carried  into 
effect  until  after  the  condemned  had  been  confined  for 


KANSAS  GROWING  UP  271 

one  year  in  the  Kansas  penitentiary  and  then  only  on 
order  of  the  governor.  As  no  governor  cared  to  take 
the  responsibility  of  ordering  a  wholesale  execution,  the 
number  of  men  convicted  of  first  degree  murder  in- 
creased until  at  one  time  there  were  about  one  hundred 
in  the  Kansas  penitentiary,  with  sentence  of  death  hang- 
ing over  them  awaiting  the  order  for  their  execution. 

Of  these  the  one  who  excited  the  greatest  interest 
among  the  visitors  to  the  penitentiary  and  the  most 
striking  figure  among  the  more  than  one  thousand  con- 
victs (for  at  that  time  Kansas  was  taking  care  of  con- 
victs from  the  territory  of  Oklahoma),  was  the  young 
man  Emmett  Dalton. 

Among  the  boldest  of  the  deputy  United  States 
marshals  who  preserved  a  semblance  of  order  and  law 
in  the  wild  land  known  as  the  Indian  Territory  during 
the  latter  half  of  the  last  century  was  Bob  Dalton. 
Fearless  to  the  point  of  recklessness,  deadly  in  his  aim, 
and  quicker  to  draw  than  most  gunmen,  he  possessed 
to  a  very  considerable  extent  the  confidence  of  the 
department  of  justice  at  Washington,  until  it  was  dis- 
covered that  he  was  selling  protection  to  outlaws. 
Confronted  with  the  evidence,  he  excused  his  action  by 
claiming  that  the  Government  owed  him  a  considerable 
sum  for  his  services  as  deputy  marshal,  which  he  had 
not  been  able  to  get  on  account  of  the  red  tape  con- 
nected with  Government  dealings,  and  he  was  just  get- 
ting even.  He  was  not  punished  further  than  being  dis- 
missed from  the  service.  His  deals  with  the  outlaws 
showed  the  criminal  bent  of  his  mind  and  shortly  after 
he  determined  to  cut  loose  from  all  restraints  of  law  and 
become  a  leader  of  a  bandit  band. 

It  must  be  said  for  Bob  Dalton  that  he  had  the 
qualities  of  leadership  which  made  him  a  most  dan- 
gerous outlaw.  Nature  had  dowered  him  with  a  more 
than  ordinarily  keen,  though  crooked  brain.  His  fol- 


272  WHEN  KANSAS  WAS  YOUNG 

lowers  feared  but  also  loved  him,  for  he  was  generous 
as  well  as  bold.  They  were  ready  to  follow  him  into 
any  danger  even  against  their  better  judgment,  and 
die  with  him  if  that  was  to  be  the  fortune  of  the  fight. 
For  some  months  after  the  organization  of  his  band 
he  had  uninterrupted  success.  There  were  train  rob- 
beries as  bold  and  spectacular  as  were  ever  undertaken 
by  the  James  and  Younger  gangs,  and  the  name  of 
Dalton  became  notorious  in  the  annals  of  border  out- 
lawry. 

One  mild  October  day — October  4,  1892,  to  be  exact 
— Bob  Dalton  gathered  his  band  together  and  outlined 
his  plans  for  a  raid  on  the  banks  of  the  town  of  Coffey- 
ville.  With  him  were  his  two  younger  brothers,  Grattin 
and  Emmett,  then  a  boy  of  barely  nineteen,  Bill  Powers, 
and  Dick  Broadwell.  Broadwell  was  the  son  of  Major 
Broadwell,  whose  cattle  ranged  in  the  Medicine  country. 
I  had  seen  the  boy  Dick  often.  He  had  always  seemed 
to  me  to  be  a  rather  overgrown,  awkward,  good-natured 
youth,  not  naturally  a  tough,  but  of  that  impression- 
able nature  which  would  be  influenced  and  greatly  at- 
tracted by  a  man  like  Bob  Dalton.  So,  with  visions  of 
adventure  and  riches  easily  obtained,  young  Broadwell 
had  joined  the  gang  and  afterward,  as  this  story  will 
show,  paid  for  his  folly  with  his  life. 

To  his  companions  Bob  Dalton  told  of  the  large  ac- 
cumulation of  cash  in  the  Coffeyville  banks,  the  Condon 
and  the  First  National.  They  were  to  ride  boldly  into 
town.  Two  of  them,  Bob  and  Emmett  Dalton,  were  to 
hold  up  the  First  National,  while  Grat  Dalton,  Bill 
Powers,  and  Dick  Broadwell  were  to  loot  the  Condon 
bank.  Some  of  the  members  of  the  gang  objected. 
They  said  that  Coffeyville  was  a  town  in  which  many 
men  were  accustomed  to  carry  arms.  The  Daltons, 
too,  had  lived  in  Coffeyville  and  were  known  to  many 
Coffeyville  people.  The  risk  seemed  too  great.  The 


KANSAS  GROWING  UP  273 

bandit  leader  listened  to  the  objections  and  then  told 
them  that  he  had  determined  on  the  raid.  He  was 
going  to  pull  off  a  bank  robbery  more  sensational  than 
any  the  James  boys  or  the  Youngers  had  undertaken 
and  would  carry  away  a  bigger  loot.  If  any  of  them 
did  not  dare  to  go  with  him  it  was  because  he  was  a 
coward.  That  settled  it.  His  was  the  dominating 
mind  and  none  of  them  would  acknowledge  to  Bob  Dai- 
ton  that  they  were  cowards.  To  Emmett,  the  boy,  his 
brother  Bob  was  a  demigod.  He  had  been  the  hero 
of  his  boyhood  and  was  still  his  hero,  whom  he  was 
willing  to  follow  anywhere  and  for  whom  he  was  willing, 
if  necessary,  to  die. 

A  few  minutes  after  the  opening  of  the  banks  on 
October  5,  Grat  Dalton,  Bill  Powers,  and  Dick  Broad- 
well  dismounted  in  front  of  the  Condon  bank  and  en- 
tered. A  moment  afterward  the  cashier  and  his  as- 
sistant were  facing  the  revolvers  of  the  bandits.  The 
cashier  was  ordered  to  open  the  safe,  but  replied  that 
it  was  a  time  lock  and  he  could  not  open  it.  "How  soon 
will  it  be  open?"  asked  Grat  Dalton.  "In  ten  minutes," 
answered  the  cashier.  "We  will  wait,"  coolly  announced 
Dalton. 

That  ten  minutes  was  a  fateful  period  of  time. 
Had  the  bandits  been  content  to  have  taken  what  cash 
there  was  in  sight,  they  might  have  escaped,  but  during 
the  wait  the  citizens  became  aware  of  what  was  going 
on.  Resolute  men  began  to  get  their  guns  and  the 
battle  opened.  It  was  short  but  bloody.  When  it 
ended  the  city  marshal,  Connelly,  and  three  other 
citizens,  L.  M.  Baldwin,  C.  J.  Brown  and  Thomas  G. 
Ayers,  and  four  of  the  bandits,  Bob  Dalton,  Grattin 
Dalton,  Bill  Powers,  and  Dick  Broadwell  were  either 
dead  or  dying  and  Emmett  Dalton,  his  shoulder  shat- 
tered by  a  Winchester  bullet  and  his  back  torn  by  a 
load  of  buckshot,  was  supposed  to  be  mortally  wounded. 


274  WHEN  KANSAS  WAS  YOUNG 

Bob  Dalton,  cool  and  desperate  to  the  last  and  deadly 
in  his  aim,  was  responsible  for  the  death  of  most  of 
the  citizens. 

In  an  alley  afterward  known  as  "bloody  alley"  the 
bandits  went  to  death  as  they  were  attempting  to 
escape.  Emmett  might  have  escaped  with  the  wound 
in  his  shoulder  but  his  love  for  his  brother  and  boy- 
hood hero  was  stronger  than  his  love  of  life,  so  he 
turned  back  amid  a  hail  of  bullets  to  try  to  rescue 
Bob.  With  one  arm  disabled  he  tried  to  raise  the  dy- 
ing bandit  from  the  ground.  "It  is  no  use.  I  am  done 
for.  Save  yourself  if  you  can,"  gasped  the  leader, 
and  Emmett  reluctantly  mounted  to  ride  away  when 
he  received  a  charge  of  shot  in  his  back  and  fell  from 
his  horse,  as  it  was  supposed  mortally  wounded. 

Ninety-nine  men  out  of  a  hundred  would  not  have 
survived  the  wounds  inflicted  on  Emmett  Dalton,  but 
he  was  not  an  ordinary  man.  The  doctor  who  looked 
him  over  and  dressed  his  wounds  pronounced  him  the 
finest  specimen  of  physical  manhood  he  had  ever  seen, 
but  at  that  gave  no  hope  of  his  recovery.  There  was 
talk  among  the  indignant  citizens  of  lynching  the  boy, 
but  the  majority  did  not  favor  the  idea  of  hanging 
a  man  who  was  supposed  to  be  dying.  So  Emmett 
Dalton  lived.  For  weeks  he  hovered  between  life  and 
death.  It  was  just  touch  and  go  whether  he  lived  or 
died,  but  his  magnificent  strength  triumphed.  When 
he  was  convalescent  he  was  taken  before  the  court,  plead 
guilty,  and  was  sentenced  to  be  hanged  under  the  pro- 
visions of  the  peculiar  Kansas  law. 

Wardens  generally  had  little  complaint  of  his  con- 
duct as  a  prisoner.  He  learned  the  trade  of  a  tailor  and 
became  something  of  an  expert.  But  the  desperate 
wounds  he  had  received  never  entirely  healed,  and  after 
a  time  began  to  grow  worse  instead  of  better,  until 
finally  the  prison  physician  declared  that  there  must 
either  be  an  operation  or  Dalton  would  lose  his  arm. 


KANSAS  GROWING  UP  275 

Governor  Hoch,  acting  on  the  recommendation  of 
the  prison  doctor,  granted  the  ex-bandit  a  parole  for 
four  months  in  order  that  he  might  go  where  he  could 
have  proper  surgical  treatment.  He  had  come  to 
Topeka  for  that  purpose  and  it  was  then  I  met  him. 
Whatever  may  have  been  in  the  heart  of  the  man,  he 
was  outwardly  frank  and  attractive.  He  perhaps  did 
not  have  great  educational  advantages,  but  he  talked 
well  and  frankly.  He  insisted  that  he  had  killed  no 
one  that  terrible  day  in  Coffeyville,  but  made  no  com- 
plaint about  his  conviction.  "I  was  guilty,"  he  said 
frankly,  "because  I  was  with  the  crowd  that  planned 
the  crime  and  murdered  the  citizens.  I  was  with  the 
gang  because  I  loved  my  brother  Bob.  Whatever  he 
may  have  been,  however  much  of  a  criminal,  he  was  good 
to  me  and  I  loved  him.  I  might  have  gotten  away,  I 
think,  but  I  could  not  bear  the  thought  of  leaving  him 
there  weltering  in  his  blood,  and  so  I  rode  back  and 
tried  to  save  him.  It  seemed  to  me  that  the  air  was 
full  of  bullets  and  I  cannot  understand  how  I  escaped 
with  my  life.  I  guess  it  was  a  good  thing  that  I  was 
shot  and  sent  to  prison,  for  I  have  learned  a  lesson^  and 
that  is  that  crime  does  not  pay.  My  family  are  not 
all  criminals.  I  have  brothers  who  are  law-abiding  and 
successful  business  men,  and  the  law  that  I  and  my 
other  brothers  were  violating  protects  the  lives  and 
property  of  these  law-abiding  brothers  of  mine.  I 
want  to  get  a  pardon  and  go  out  a  free  man  to  show 
the  world  that  I  can  make  good." 

Emmett's  mother,  a  sweet-faced,  white-haired  old 
lady  of  three  score  and  ten,  had  during  all  the  years  her 
youngest  born  was  in  prison,  worked  unceasingly  for 
his  release.  His  conduct  during  the  time  of  his  parole 
helped  and  at  the  end  of  it  Governor  Hoch  granted 
him  a  full  and  unconditional  pardon,  incurring  by  his 
act  a  good  deal  of  criticism,  especially  from  the  people 
of  Coifeyville,  many  of  whom  still  had  a  vivid  recollec- 


276  WHEN  KANSAS  WAS  YOUNG 

tion  of  the  tragedy  of  the  fifteen  years  before.  Per- 
sonally I  have  never  blamed  the  governor.  Had  I  been 
in  his  place  I  think  I  would  have  pardoned  the  ex- 
bandit,  for  I  believed  in  his  avowal  that  he  intended 
to  make  good. 

A  short  time  after  his  release  Dalton  married  the 
widow  of  a  bank  robber  who  was  killed  by  an  officer 
who  was  attempting  his  arrest.  Not  long  after  he 
undertook  a  reproduction  of  the  crimes  of  the  Daltons 
for  moving  picture  purposes.  He  offered  as  an  excuse 
for  this  that  it  would  furnish  an  object  lesson  to  warn 
young  men  against  engaging  in  crime,  but  the  general 
sentiment  was  that  it  was  an  attempt  to  capitalize  his 
crimes  and  make  of  himself  a  movie  hero. 

Then  came  rumors  of  disgraceful  domestic  brawls, 
of  dissipation  and  disreputable  episodes.  How  much 
truth  there  was  in  these  rumors  I  cannot  say.  They 
may  have  been  very  much  exaggerated,  for  it  is  true 
now  as  always  that  the  way  of  the  transgressor  is  hard 
and  the  man  who  has  spent  years  within  prison  walls 
as  a  convict,  walks  ever  after  in  the  shadow  of  his 
crime  with  suspicion  dogging  his  footsteps. 


Chester  I.  Long 

Along  in  the  middle  eighties  a  young  man,  who  had 
finished  his  law  course,  largely  under  the  tutelage  of 
George  R.  Peck,  hung  out  his  shingle  in  Medicine 
Lodge.  In  his  youth  he  was  a  teacher  of  elocution,  but 
had  long  since  lived  that  down.  His  library  at  first, 
as  I  recall,  consisted  of  a  copy  of  the  revised  statutes 
of  1868,  two  volumes  of  Blackstone,  and  a  few  other 
textbooks,  while  the  rest  of  the  space  in  the  book- 
case was  mostly  taken  up  with  agricultural  reports 
and  other  light  literature.  Chester  I.  Long  was  a  good 


KANSAS  GROWING  UP  277 

student  and  hard  worker  and  soon  began  to  get  his 
share  of  such  law  business  as  there  was  in  a  frontier 
town  like  Medicine  Lodge.  This  story,  however,  has 
to  do  with  his  political  rather  than  his  business  career. 

His  first  serious  attempt  to  break  into  politics  was 
in  the  year  1889.  Senator  F.  C.  Price  had  resigned  his 
place  in  the  state  Senate  to  take  the  judgeship  of  the 
newly  created  judicial  district.  The  senatorial  district 
consisted  of  the  counties  of  Harper,  Barber,  Comanche, 
Clark,  and  Meade.  There  were  three  candidates  to  fill 
the  vacancy  caused  by  the  resignation  of  Senator 
Price,  George  Finch,  of  Harper,  Chester  I.  Long,  of 
Medicine  Lodge,  and  George  Willis  Emerson,  banker? 
novelist  and  promoter,  of  Meade. 

Finch  had  opposition  in  his  own  county  but  had 
enough  delegates  to  control  the  county  convention  and 
selected  the  delegates  to  the  senatorial  convention. 
He  made  the  mistake  of  naming  his  leading  opponents 
as  members  of  his  delegation  to  the  Coldwater  conven- 
tion. They  intended  to  stay  with  him  only  so  long 
as  there  was  no  danger  that  he  would  be  nominated, 
which  I  may  remark  in  passing  is  not  a  good  kind  of 
delegate  to  have,  so  far  as  the  candidate  is  concerned. 
None  of  the  three  candidates  had  enough  votes  to  nom- 
inate, but  after  a  considerable  amount  of  balloting 
enough  of  the  supporters  of  Emerson  were  ready  to 
leave  him  and  go  to  Finch  to  nominate  him,  provided 
all  of  his  own  delegates  would  stand  hitched.  Immedi- 
ately a  part  of  the  Harper  delegates  forsook  their 
own  candidate,  voted  for  Long  and  nominated  him. 

A  year  later  the  nomination  would  have  been  an 
empty  honor,  for  the  Populist  wave  swept  the  district, 
but  the  wave  had  not  started  to  roll  yet  when  the  elec- 
tion to  fill  the  vacancy  was  held  and  Mr.  Long  was 
triumphantly  elected.  In  that  way  he  became  a  mem- 
ber of  the  hold-over  Republican  Senate  which  tried  the 


278  WHEN  KANSAS  WAS  YOUNG 

impeachment  case  of  Judge  Theodocius  Botkin,  who 
had  been  impeached  by  the  Populist  house  elected  in 
1890.  The  triumphant  election  of  Jerry  Simpson  in 
1890  had  a  tendency  to  discourage  Republicans  in 
that  district  who  had  ambitions  to  go  to  Congress,  so 
that  when  it  became  known  that  Senator  Long  was 
willing  to  offer  himself  a  living  sacrifice  in  1892,  he  had 
no  particular  trouble  in  getting  the  nomination.  He 
made  a  strenuous  campaign,  and  apparently  a  reason- 
ably effective  one,  as  he  managed  to  reduce  the  Populist 
majority  of  more  than  8,000  in  1890,  to  less  than  3,000 
in  1892. 

Long  was  a  tireless  worker  and  developed  into  an 
effective  campaign  speaker,  but  some  of  the  arts  of  the 
politician  he  never  learned.  Cordial  to  those  with 
whom  he  was  acquainted,  he  never  really  developed  that 
peculiar  ability  to  mingle  with  the  promiscuous  crowd 
and  appear  to  be  nearly  tickled  to  death  to  see  and 
shake  hands  with  people  he  had  never  met  before. 
He  tried  to  do  it,  but  somehow  or  other  there  were  a 
lot  of  the  people  he  shook  hands  with  who  never  seemed 
to  be  satisfied  that  he  meant  it.  He  was  a  man  who 
never  used  tobacco  or  intoxicating  liquor  in  any  form 
at  that  time  and  I  think  has  never  acquired  the  habit 
since.  Some  of  his  supporters  during  his  first  cam- 
paign made  him  believe  that  passing  the  cigars  was 
necessary  and  he  fell  for  it.  He  knew  nothing  what- 
ever about  a  cigar.  All  looked  alike  to  him.  Simon 
Lebrecht,  the  Hebrew  merchant,  of  Medicine  Lodge, 
had  somewhere  gotten  hold  of  a  large  quantity  of  cigars, 
I  think  possibly  at  auction.  In  those  days  I  used  to 
smoke  and  tried  one  of  these  cigars.  That  satisfied 
me  fully.  I  never  had  either  desire  or  curiosity  to  try 
another. 

I  do  not  know  who  helped  put  up  that  job  on  Chester 
I.  Long,  who  was  persuaded  to  believe  that  these 


KANSAS  GROWING  UP  279 

Lebrecht  cigars  were  really  a  choice  article  and  bought 
several  boxes  for  campaign  purposes.  Campaign  cigars 
at  best  are  bad,  but  these  were  the  limit.  They  might 
have  been  made  useful  in  curing  young  boys  who  had 
an  ambition  to  learn  to  smoke.  If  one  of  them  had 
not  killed  the  boy  he  would  have  resolved  with  little 
"Robert  Reed,"  of  old  school  reader  fame,  never  again 
to  touch  the  filthy  weed.  In  the  first  crowd  the  con- 
gressional candidate  handed  round  his  box  of  cigars. 
They  were  taken  readily  and  lighted.  The  smokers 
were  hardened  frontiersmen  in  large  part,  inured  to 
hardships  and  accustomed  to  the  odor  of  the  corrals, 
but  when  forty  or  fifty  of  those  cigars  began  to  burn 
more  or  less  freely,  those  men  began  to  cast  on  each 
other  looks  of  suspicion.  One  of  them  intimated  to  his 
neighbor  that  it  was  all  right,  of  course,  to  kill  the 
pesky  varmints  that  came  prowling  round  the  place, 
but  a  man  ought  at  least  hang  his  clothes  out  in  the 
air  for  a  few  hours  before  coming  into  a  crowd  that 
way.  When  the  real  cause  of  the  trouble  was  de- 
termined a  friend  of  the  candidate  called  him  to  one 
side  and  said:  "Of  course,  Mr.  Long,  we  old  regulars 
who  vote  our  tickets  straight  are  goin5  to  stay  with 
you.  We  are  willin*  to  make  even  greater  sacrifices  for 
the  Grand  Old  Party  than  this,  but  there  are  a  lot 
of  independent  voters  in  this  district  who  went  off  and 
voted  the  Pop  ticket  two  years  ago.  If  they  are 
handled  right  they  will  come  back  this  year  and  vote 
with  us,  but  if  you  go  to  distributin'  them  cigars  regu- 
lar there  is  simply  no  hope.  The  impression  is  likely 
to  get  out  that  you  are  tryin'  to  poison  your  con- 
stituents." 

In  1894  Chester  was  renominated  and  the  tide  of 
Populism  had  so  far  waned  that  he  was  elected.  He 
was  renominated  again  in  1896,  but  the  free  silver 
sentiment  was  so  powerful  that  year  in  Kansas  that 


280  WHEN  KANSAS  WAS  YOUNG 

Jerry  Simpson  defeated  him  by  something  over  3,000 
majority,  although  Long  made  a  thorough  and  strong 
campaign  in  opposition  to  the  silver  theory.  That 
ended  the  free  silver  issue  and  the  Populist  party  went 
out  of  business  as  a  party.  Mr.  Long  was  elected  in 
1898,  1900  and  1902  by  comfortable  majorities,  but 
was  elected  to  the  United  States  Senate  by  the  legisla- 
ture of  1903  and  therefore  did  not  serve  his  fourth  term 
in  the  lower  house.  In  the  United  States  Senate  Ches- 
ter I.  Long  was  counted  a  "standpatter"  while  the  senti- 
ment of  Kansas  was  tending  more  and  more  strongly 
toward  a  more  radical  brand  of  politics.  It  was  this 
popular  tendency  that  caused  his  defeat  for  renomina- 
tion  and  swept  Joseph  L.  Bristow  into  a  seat  among 
the  mighty. 

I  have  heard  men  attribute  Long's  defeat  to  his  lack 
of  ability  as  a  "mixer."  All  that  is  necessary  to  re- 
fute that  theory  is  to  gaze  for  a  few  brief  moments  on 
the  attenuated  and  also  elongated  form  of  Joe  Bristow. 
In  comparison  with  Joe  Bristow  an  icicle  seems  like  con- 
centrated sunshine  or  a  modern  heater  in  action.  I  have 
my  doubts,  anyway,  about  the  efficacy  of  the  made-to- 
order  smile  and  the  glad  hand  in  politics  in  Kansas. 
The  Kansas  voter  is  peculiar  in  that  he  is  liable  to  con- 
clude that  the  candidate  who  is  particularly  effusive 
in  his  handshaking  and  verbal  glucose,  is  trying  to  put 
something  over  on  the  sovereign  squatter  who  does  the 
voting.  Mr.  Long  was  defeated  not  because  the  voters 
of  Kansas  doubted  his  ability  or  his  integrity,  but  be- 
cause a  majority  of  them  did  not  believe  that  he  at  that 
time  represented  their  political  views.  Bristow  was 
nominated  and  elected  because  the  majority  believed 
he  did  represent  their  views. 


KANSAS  GROWING  UP  281 


Governor  Allen's  Maiden  Speech 

In  Hillsdale  County,  Michigan,  lives  an  old  farmer, 
Ben  E.  Kies,  who  in  the  days  when  the  Farmers' 
Alliance  was  the  dominant  power  in  Kansas,  was  a 
prime  mover  and  trusted  adviser  of  the  organization. 
Kies  was  a  shoe  merchant  in  Medicine  Lodge,  the 
trusted  friend  and  admirer  of  Jerry  Simpson,  and  more 
than  any  other  man  responsible  for  Jerry's  entry  into 
politics.  It  was  he  who  induced  the  "sockless  states- 
man" to  become  a  candidate  for  the  legislature  and 
afterward  at  the  Kinsley  convention  waved  aside  the 
proffered  honor  of  a  nomination  to  Congress  and 
urged  instead  the  nomination  of  Jerry  Simpson.  He 
afterward  quit  the  business  of  selling  shoes,  started  the 
publication  of  the  Wichita  Commoner,  beating  William 
J.  Bryan  to  the  name  by  several  years,  and  as  pub- 
lisher for  the  few  hectic  years  while  the  Populist  party 
was  a  potent  force  in  politics,  his  paper  wielded  per- 
haps the  greatest  influence  of  any  publication  of  that 
political  faith.  All  this  is  preparatory  to  the  state- 
ment that  it  was  Ben  E.  Kies,  the  old  Michigan 
farmer,  who  first  brought  the  now  celebrated  Governor 
of  Kansas  before  an  audience,  hostile  to  the  last  de- 
gree and  under  circumstances  most  painful  and  em- 
barrassing to  the  boy  orator,  who,  with  most  unpropi- 
tious  environment  and  with  exceedingly  serious  handi- 
caps, by  the  exercise  of  ready  wit  and  resourcefulness 
saved  himself  from  disastrous  consequences,  if  he  did 
not  score  an  oratorical  triumph. 

Henry  J.  Allen  was  not  cradled  in  luxury.  He 
worked  during  his  young  manhood  as  a  barber  in  the 
city  of  Topeka  to  earn  money  enough  to  pay  his  way 
through  college  and  after  he  had  finished  his  college 
experience  got  a  job  as  reporter  on  the  Salina  Repub- 


282  WHEN  KANSAS  WAS  YOUNG 

lican,  then  owned  and  edited  by  J.  L.  Bristow,  after- 
ward United  States  senator.  In  October,  1891,  the 
Farmers'  Alliance  had  reached  and  passed  the  zenith 
of  its  influence  and  power.  The  evidences  of  dissolu- 
tion were  already  discernible  to  the  closely  observing, 
but  like  a  great  flywheel  which  continues  to  revolve  for 
a  good  while  after  the  force  which  put  it  in  motion 
has  abated,  the  Alliance  was  still,  to  the  superficial  ob- 
server, a  powerful  organization.  It  was  in  this  mild 
October  of  1891  that  some  five  hundred  delegates  met 
in  Salina  in  the  annual  Alliance  convention.  Major 
J.  K.  Hudson  was  then  the  militant  proprietor  of  the 
Topeka  Daily  Capital  and  fighting  the  Alliance  and 
Populism  with  his  usual  uncompromising  vigor.  He 
called  a  young  reporter,  L.  L.  Kiene,  and  told  him  to 
go  to  Salina  and  get  a  report  of  the  Alliance  conven- 
tion. 

"They  don't  like  me  or  my  paper,"  said  the  major, 
"but  I  want  you  to  find  out  what  they  do  and  report 
the  meeting  as  accurately  as  possible." 

Kiene  went  to  Salina  and  there  entered  into  a  sort 
of  offensive  and  defensive  alliance  with  young  Allen, 
the  object  being  somehow  or  other  to  get  the  proceed- 
ings of  that  secret  convention.  The  first  day  the  task 
was  easy,  for  the  two  reporters  found  a  disgruntled 
delegate  who  was  sore  on  the  Alliance  and  ready  to  give 
away  its  deliberations.  The  reports  published  in  the 
Capital  and  Republican  caused  great  excitement  among 
the  delegates  who  were  still  loyal,  but  they  could  not 
tell  whether  they  were  being  betrayed  by  a  traitor  in 
their  own  camp  or  a  spy  who  had  managed  somehow 
to  get  into  the  building.  On  the  second  or  third  day 
of  the  convention  the  disgruntled  delegate  went  home 
and  that  shut  off  the  reporters'  source  of  news.  The 
next  day  they  managed  to  bribe  the  janitor  of  the 
building  to  leave  a  side  door  unlocked  during  the  noon 


KANSAS  GROWING  UP  283 

hour,  and  through  this  they  slipped  in,  and  then  up 
to  the  dark  attic,  where  they  concealed  themselves  near 
a  ventilator  shaft  that  connected  the  assembly  room 
with  the  upper  room.  The  attic  was  unfloored,  dark 
as  a  dungeon,  and  covered  with  a  tin  roof  which  con- 
centrated the  heat  rays  from  the  Kansas  sun.  October 
in  Kansas  is  often  decidedly  like  summer  and  with  the 
sun  beating  down  on  the  tin  roof  the  temperature  rose 
nearly  to  the  boiling  point.  Neither  of  these  reporters 
had  reached  the  degree  of  fatness  they  have  acquired 
since,  but  at  that  they  were  a  couple  of  most  uncom- 
fortable young  men.  Pretty  soon  they  heard  the  tramp 
of  the  delegates  filing  into  the  hall,  and  then  the 
rapping  of  the  chairman's  gavel  as  he  called  the  as- 
sembly to  order. 

The  president  of  the  Alliance  was  Captain  Frank 
McGrath,  of  Beloit.  He  had  been  one  of  the  most 
celebrated  and  efficient  of  the  frontier  sheriffs  who  made 
a  marvelous  record  for  daring  and  efficiency.  Frank 
McGrath  was  a  born  hunter  of  criminals.  Fearless 
and  untiring,  and  with  an  almost  uncanny  knowledge 
of  the  habits  of  the  bad  men  who  infested  the  border, 
he  rarely,  if  ever,  failed  to  get  a  man  when  he  started 
after  him.  He  was  often  in  positions  of  great  danger, 
but  never  hesitated  to  take  the  chance  and  seemed  to 
bear  a  charmed  life.  McGrath  was  instinctively  against 
mob  law,  which  fact  had  a  bearing  on  the  results 
told  in  this  story.  Hardly  had  the  president  rapped, 
for  order  and  the  delegates  become  quiet  when  he 
announced  that  there  must  be  either  spies  or  a  traitor 
in  the  building  and  the  first  business  would  be  to  ap- 
point a  committee  of  three  to  search  the  building. 
"On  that  committee,"  said  the  president,  "I  will  ap- 
point brother  B.  F.  Kies  and  two  others,"  mentioning 
them.  "They  will  proceed  at  once  to  make  a  thorough 
search  and  find  the  culprit." 


284  WHEN  KANSAS  WAS  YOUNG 

Although  the  temperature  in  the  attic  was  well  up 
toward  a  hundred,  the  two  reporters  experienced  some- 
thing of  a  chill  when  they  heard  that  announcement. 
They  decided'that  it  would  be  best  for  them  to  separate 
as  far  as  possible,  lie  flat  between  the  joists  and  trust 
to  the  darkness  of  the  unlighted  attic  for  escape.  The 
future  governor  took  one  corner  of  the  attic  and  Kiene 
the  other.  The  committee  headed  by  Ben  Kies  came 
clumping  up  the  attic  stairs.  Tramping  carefully  but 
with  determination  from  one  joist  to  another,  they 
lighted  matches  to  dissipate  the  gloom.  Allen  was 
lying  low  in  one  corner,  with  nothing  to  support  him 
but  the  frail  laths  that  held  the  plastering,  trusting 
to  luck  and  a  kindly  Providence. 

It  was  Kies  who  discovered  him  and  announced  his 
discovery  with  triumphant  voice. 

"You  may  as  well  get  up  and  come  along  with  us," 
commanded  Kies. 

The  future  governor  announced  with  as  steady  tones 
as  he  could  command  that  he  was  perfectly  willing  to 
go.  He  felt,  however,  that  his  wishes  in  the  matter 
would  cut  little  figure,  which  conclusion  was  confirmed 
by  the  firm  grasp  the  committeemen  took  on  various 
parts  of  his  person  and  the  forcible  way  in  which  they 
hustled  him  toward  the  attic  stair.  When  he  was 
brought  before  the  assembled  delegates  there  was  a 
moment's  hush  and  then  a  general  yell,  "Kill  the  spy! 
Kill  the  spy!  He  is  one  of  Joe  Hudson's  hirelings. 
Kill  him!" 

There  was  a  rush  toward  the  stage  and  it  would  have 
gone  hard  with  the  young  reporter  if  it  had  not  been 
that  McGrath  was  chairman.  As  I  have  said,  he  was 
instinctively  opposed  to  mob  law  and  he  was  able  to 
control  that  assembly. 

"Be  quiet,  brothers,"  he  said,  "we  will  hear  what 
this  young  man  has  to  say."  Then,  turning  to  the 


KANSAS  GROWING  UP  285 

dust-begrimed,  cobweb-covered  and  freely  perspiring  re- 
porter, he  said:  "Young  man,  why  were  you  in  that 
attic  and  what  have  you  to  say  for  yourself?" 

It  was  Henry  Allen's  maiden  effort  as  a  speaker  be- 
fore a  large  crowd,  but  he  rose  to  the  occasion.  As 
he  stood  there  he  was  not  a  presentable  figure,  dirty, 
sweaty,  and  generally  disheveled,  but  that  may  have 
helped  him.  He  probably  was  not  in  a  mirthful  frame 
of  mind,  but  he  managed  to  face  the  crowd  with  the 
semblance  of  a  grin  and  said:  "Gentlemen  of  the 
Alliance,  you  don't  know  how  much  it  pains  me  to  ap- 
pear before  you  in  this  condition." 

In  those  days  the  average  Alliance  man  was  disposed 
to  take  matters  very  seriously.  They  had  visions  of 
the  "Great  Red  Dragon,"  the  "Altar  of  Mammon," 
and  the  "Seven  Great  Conspiracies,"  but  there  were 
men  in  that  audience  who  had  a  saving  sense  of  humor 
and  the  opening  statement  of  the  young  reporter  sort 
of  caught  them,  and  when  he  followed  with  the  further 
statement,  "I  assure  you,  gentlemen,  that  this  recep- 
tion is  wholly  unexpected.  I  hardly  supposed  that  I 
would  be  greeted  with  so  much  enthusiasm,"  several 
of  the  delegates  laughed  aloud. 

"I  admit,  gentlemen,"  continued  Allen,  "that  I  was 
in  the  attic,  and  if  you  want  further  evidence  the  gen- 
tlemen composing  this  committee  who  have  so  insistently 
escorted  me  to  this  platform,  will  testify  to  the  fact, 
but  I  am  not  there  now.  However,  I  have  heard  one 
charge  made  against  me  which  I  most  emphatically 
deny ;  it  is  that  I  am  one  of  Joe  Hudson's  men.  I  never 
worked  for  Joe  Hudson  in  my  life  and  don't  know  what 
he  looks  like.  I  am  a  reporter  on  the  Salina  Republican 
and  will  confess  that  I  was  in  the  attic  to  get  a  report 
of  your  meeting." 

At  this  point  a  number  of  delegates  started  another 
movement  toward  the  platform  but  were  checked  by  the 


286  WHEN  KANSAS  WAS  YOUNG 

chairman,  and  Henry,  with  renewed  confidence,  seeing 
that  President  McGrath  did  not  intend  to  permit  per- 
sonal violence,  proceeded  with  his  remarks. 

"When  I  went  into  the  attic  I  did  so  simply  in  the 
line  of  duty.  It  was  my  business  to  get  the  news  and 
you  gentlemen  guard  your  proceedings  with  so  much 
care  that  I  was  driven  to  this  as  a  last  resort.  I  ad- 
mit that  it  was  not  the  right  thing  to  do,  but  I  am 
only  a  poor  reporter  and  my  bread  and  butter  depend 
on  my  ability  to  get  the  news.  I  am  sorry  this  oc- 
curred and  assure  you  that  it  will  never  happen  again." 

His  ready  wit,  resourcefulness,  and  apparent  frank- 
ness of  statement  won  him  some  friends  even  in  that 
hostile  audience  and  there  was  some  scattering  ap- 
plause when  he  closed.  Then  President  McGrath  de- 
manded that  he  give  up  his  notes. 

"I  have  no  notes,"  said  the  reporter. 

"Who  was  with  you?"  asked  McGrath. 

It  was  at  this  point  that  Kiene,  listening  at  the  ven- 
tilator shaft,  felt  the  hot  and  cold  flashes  chase  each 
other  up  and  down  his  spine,  but  to  his  relief  the  future 
governor  lied  promptly  and  calmly  like  a  gentleman. 
It  was  then  that  Kiene  realized  the  force  of  the  little 
Sunday-school  girl's  definition  of  a  lie  when  she  said, 
"A  lie  is  an  abomination  in  the  sight  of  the  Lord  and 
a  very  pleasant  help  in  time  of  trouble." 

In  answer  to  the  question  Allen  promptly  and  with 
an  expression  of  almost  cherubic  innocence  said,  "There 
was  no  one." 

Kiene  breathed  easier. 

"Is  there  any  other  reporter  in  the  house  to  your 
knowledge?"  asked  McGrath. 

"No,  sir." 

"Will  you  promise  never  to  attempt  anything  of  this 
kind  again?" 

"Yes,  sir." 


KANSAS  GROWING  UP  287 

Then  the  young  reporter  was  taken  before  the  county 
attorney  and  an  effort  was  made  to  find  a  law  under 
which  he  could  be  prosecuted,  but  as  there  was  no  such 
law,  he  was  released. 

The  convention  passed  some  red  hot  resolutions  de- 
nouncing Allen  personally  and  the  paper  which  em- 
ployed him.  Allen  somewhat  surprised  the  chairman 
of  the  committee  on  resolutions  by  asking  for  a  copy 
of  the  resolution  for  publication. 

Freed,  as  they  supposed,  from  spying  ears  and  eyes, 
the  delegates  proceeded  with  their  secret  conference 
while  Kiene,  sweating,  but  happy  in  the  attic,  took 
notes  of  the  deliberations  and  furnished  a  full  report 
both  to  the  Capital  and  the  Salina  Republican. 

During  the  nearly  twenty-nine  years  which  have 
elapsed  since  that  hot  October  day,  the  young  re- 
porter has  acquired  nation-wide  fame  as  an  orator  and 
as  the  chief  executive  of  the  great  state  in  which  he 
was  born,  but  never  did  his  natural  facility  as  a  speaker 
stand  him  so  much  in  hand  as  when  he  was  dragged 
before  that  convention  of  wrathful  delegates,  the  ma- 
jority of  whom  would  just  then  have  watched  him 
hang,  if  not  with  positive  satisfaction,  at  least  with  a 
feeling  that  justice  had  been  in  a  measure  satisfied. 


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